Speak, O stones of Rome! Whisper to me, you high palaces;
Streets, breathe me a word! City-soul, do you not stir?
Yes, within your holy ramparts all is enspirited,
Roma aeterna, all that’s around me has hushed till it’s still.
Ah, who whispers to me?—in which window will first I encounter
That glance, that exquisite form that will quicken and burn?
Little do I suspect the ways by which ever, and ever
I’m drawn to and from her, sacrifice all the delights of my time.
Yet do I contemplate palace and temple, ruin and column
Quite as a wiser, more circumspect traveler might on his tour.
Soon, though, it will be over, then will one single temple,
Amor’s temple, receive its initiate, be his alone.
Though you are indeed the world, O Rome, yet if love were lacking,
This world would not be this world, neither would Rome be Rome.
1788–90
Do not regret, beloved, how swift you believe your surrender;
Know that with you no impertinent baseness colors my thoughts.
Many the ways of the arrows of Amor; one merely scratches,
And its poison, secretly creeping, sickens the heart through the years.
But mightily fletched, with keen and freshly honed edges
The others strive to the core and set us at once aflame.
When gods and goddesses loved, in the ancient time of the heroes,
Lust would follow the glance, and pleasure followed desire:
Do you think that the goddess of Love would ever think twice for a moment
When in the forests of Ida Anchises attracted her eye?
Had Luna that night hesitated to kiss the beautiful sleeper
O, how swiftly would he have been woken by envious Aurora!
Hero espied Leander in the midst of the raucous festival
And nimbly the feverish lover plunged in the midnight flood.
Rhea Sylvia wanders, the princely virgin, down to the Tiber
Its water to draw in her ewer, but instead a god scoops her up.
So by Mars two sons are begotten!—the twins are suckled
At she-wolf’s teats; and Rome names herself princess of the world.
1788–90
Happy I find myself now on the soil of the classical landscape;
Times past and present speak out more boldly and sweetly to me.
Here I take as my guide the pages once penned by the ancients,
Leafing with busy hand through their works with a daily delight.
Yet in the night Amor is keeping me busy quite otherwise;
Though it’s but half my tuition, my joy is multiplied twice.
Do I learn nothing then when I study the lovely ensculpting
Rounding that bosom, the curve of my hand as it traces her hips?
Then do I rightly conceive of the marble; contemplate, measure,
See with the eyes of touch, and feel with such seeing hands.
Thus if my darling robs from me certain hours of daylight,
Hours of night she gives me to pay for the cost of the theft.
No, it’s not kissing alone that goes on—there is rational discourse;
She being conquered by sleep, I lie there envolumed with thoughts;
Often within her arms I’ve written the poem already,
Counted with fingering hand along the line of her spine
Softly the measured hexameter. She breathes in lovely slumber,
Breath that glowingly penetrates into the depth of my breast.
Amor trims the lamp and thinks of the many ages,
Musing upon the triumvirs, they whose will he once served.
1788–90
How merry I am in Rome! I remember the mood of the days
When a miserable grayness immured me at home in the North,
Dreary the overcast sky weighed down on my skull forever,
Round one’s exhausted being a formless and colorless world.
Over the I, my I, immersed in deepening gloominess,
Brooded and peered, down the dark paths of the soul.
Now, though, my brow is lit by a glittering halo of ether,
Phoebus has come, invoking the glory of color and form.
Starlight englitters the night, it echoes with music and singing,
And to me here the moon shines brighter than once did the light of the day.
What bliss was mortal being? Am I dreaming? Father Jupiter,
How can it be that your perfumy mansion receives this guest?
Ah, my lord, here I lie and stretch out in humble entreaty
My hands for your knees—O Jupiter Xenius, ask what you will!
How it was that I entered here I cannot say; Hebe
Gripped this wanderer, drew him into the innermost shrine.
Did you command her to fetch a hero in triumph?
Was the lovely one wrong? Forgive her! Allow me error’s reward!
Your daughter, Fortuna, forgive her too! In girlish ardor
She gives out those glorious gifts as the thoughtless mood dictates.
Are you the god of hosts? O banish not then this affable
Guest and hurl him down from Olympus again to the earth.
“Poet, where did you lose your way on the climb?” Forgive me,
To you the Capitoline Hill a second Olympus must be.
Suffer my presence, Jupiter; at length let Hermes lead me
Lightly, by Cestius’ pyramid, down to the vale of Orcus.
1788–90
Flames, autumnal, glow on the rustic sociable hearthstone,
Flaring so swiftly up from the kindling they crackle and blaze.
And what makes me happier still, before the twigs in their bundle
Burn down to embers and twistingly poke themselves into the ash,
Enters my lovely girl. Now kindling and logs blaze up freely,
And the warmed night becomes for us a glittering feast.
Busily then next morning she’ll leave the camp of lovemaking
And, nimble, rouse from the ashes the freshly rekindled flame.
For above all other gifts does Amor grant us this flattery:
To arouse the spirit of joy that had almost sunk into cinders.
1788–90