What is to be done about it?

Shall I entrust myself to entangled shadows,

Where bold hands may do violence to my person?

Yet if I postpone my obedience

because of this respectable terror

I shall be prey to lamentations worse than a nocturnal assailant.

And I shall be in the wrong,

and it will last a twelve month,

For her hands have no kindness me-ward,

Nor is there anyone to whom lovers are not sacred at midnight

And in the Via Sciro.

If any man would be a lover

he may walk on the Scythian coast,

No barbarism would go to the extent of doing him harm,

The moon will carry his candle,

the stars will point out the stumbles,

Cupid will carry lighted torches before him

and keep mad dogs off his ankles.

Thus all roads are perfectly safe

and at any hour;

 Prev. P 8/99 next