Part 2 — THE INVITATION TO LOVE.
John Addington Symonds translation
No. 36.
List, my girl, with words I woo; Lay not wanton hands on you: Sit before you, in your face Gazing, ah! and seeking grace: Fix mine eyes, nor let them rove From the mark where shafts of love Their flight wing. Try, my girl, O try what bliss Young men render when they kiss! Youth is alway sturdy, straight; Old age totters in its gait. These delights of love we bring Have the suppleness of spring, Softness, sweetness, wantoning; Clasp, my Phyllis, in their ring Sweeter sweets than poets sing, Anything and everything! After daytime's heat from heaven Dews on thirsty fields are given; After verdant leaf and stem Shoots the white flower's diadem; After the white flower's bloom To the night their faint perfume Lilies fling. Try, my girl, etc., da capo.
The poem, Ludo cum Caecilia, which comes next in order, is one of the most perfect specimens of Goliardic writing. To render its fluent, languid, and yet airy grace, in any language but the Latin, is, I think, impossible. Who could have imagined that the subtlety, the refinement, almost the perversity of feeling expressed in it, should have been proper to a student of the twelfth century? The poem is spoiled toward its close by astrological and grammatical conceits; and the text is corrupt. That part I have omitted, together with some stanzas which offend a modern taste.