If you drank the water of furthest Don, Lyce,
married to some fierce husband, you’d still expose me
to the wailing winds of your native North country,
stretched out here by your cruel door.
Hear how the frame creaks, how the trees that are planted
inside your beautiful garden moan in the wind,
and how Jupiter’s pure power and divinity
ices over the fallen snow.
Set aside your disdain, it’s hateful to Venus,
lest the rope fly off, while the wheel is still turning:
you’re no Penelope, resistant to suitors,
nor born of Etruscan parents.
O, spare your suppliants, though nothing moves you,
not gifts, not my prayers, not your lover’s pallor,
that’s tinged with violet, nor your husband smitten
with a Pierian mistress,
you, no more pliant than an unbending oak-tree,
no gentler in spirit than a Moorish serpent.
My body won’t always put up with your threshold,
or the rain that falls from the sky.
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