1 <br />The harsh acts of your levity! <br />Many and many. <br />I am hung here, a scare-crow for lovers. <br /> <br />2 <br />Escape! There is, O Idiot, no escape, <br />Flee if you like into Ranaus, <br />desire will follow you thither, <br />Though you heave into the air upon the gilded Pegasean back, <br />Though you had the feathery sandals of Perseus <br />To lift you up through split air, <br />The high tracks of Hermes would not afford you shelter. <br /> <br />Amor stands upon you, Love drives upon lovers, <br />a heavy mass on free necks. <br /> <br />It is our eyes you flee, not the city, <br />You do nothing, you plot inane schemes against me, <br />Languidly you stretch out the snare <br />with which I am already familiar, <br /> <br />And yet again, and newly rumour strikes on my ears. <br /> <br />Rumours of you throughout the city, <br />and no good rumour among them. <br /> <br />'You should not believe hostile tongues. <br />'Beauty is slander's cock-shy. <br />'All lovely women have known this,' <br />'Your glory is not outblotted by venom,' <br />'Phoebus our witness, your hands are unspotted. <br /> <br />A foreign lover brought down Helen's kingdom <br />and she was led back, living home; <br />The Cytharean brought low by Mars' lechery <br />reigns in respectable heavens, . . . <br /> <br />Oh, oh, and enough of this, <br />by dew-spread caverns, <br />The Muses clinging to the mossy ridges; <br />to the ledge of the rocks: <br />Zeus' clever rapes, in the old days, <br />combusted Semele's, of Io strayed. <br />Oh how the bird flew from Trojan rafters, <br />Ida has lain with a shepherd, she has slept between sheep. <br /> <br />Even there, no escape <br />Not the Hyrcanian seaboard, not in seeking the shore of Eos. <br /> <br />All things are forgiven for one night of your games. . . . <br />Though you walk in the Via Sacra, with a peacock's tail for a fan.<br /><br />Ezra Pound<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/homage-to-sextus-propertius-xi/
