To Helen

You’re wishing to excel the gods in pride – Your posture is the bearing of a magic empress. You do not deign to yield to poet’s try. Alas! I’ve fallen victim to the willful priestess. So Cupid famous laughs at me this way. Inventive soul, he’s eager for a trial: He whispers you that I’m a wretched rake, To me this playful boy sends your denial. The trapper is keen badly on his play: Forgetting that his arrow gives us wound, And Dionysus makes us all delay And we take our images which loom. Oh, if he could have turned me from a man, embraced by twisting of liana, in the stem!