Prithee, young woman, what art thou, the most fickle of thy sex,
preparing to do in obedience to the late counsels of thy aged nurse?
Knowest thou not that such counsels are far harder to follow than that
very love which thou desirest to flee? Hast thou reflected on the dire
and unendurable torments which compliance with them will entail on thee?
O most insensate one! dost thou then, who only a few hours ago wert my
willing vassal, now wish to break away from my gentle rule, because,
forsooth, of the words of an old woman, who is no longer vassal of mine,
as if, like her, thou art now unwitting of what delights I am the
source? O most witless of women! forbear, and reflect whether thou
shouldst not find befitting happiness in that which makes the happiness
of Heaven and earth. All things that Phoebus beholds during the bright
day, from what time he emerges from Ganges, until he plunges with his
tired steeds into the Hesperian waves, to seek due repose after his
wearisome pilgrimage; all things that are confined between cold Arcturus
and the red-hot pole, all own the absolute and authentic lordship of my
wingйd son; and in Heaven not only is he esteemed a god, like the other
deities, but he is so much more puissant than them all that not one
remains who has not heretofore been vanquished by his darts. He, flying
on golden plumage throughout his realms, with such swiftness that his
passage can hardly be discerned, visits them all in turn, and, bending
his strong bow, to the drawn string he fits the arrows forged by me and
tempered in the fountains sacred to my divinity. And when he elects
anyone to his service, as being more worthy than others, that one he
rules as it likes him. He kindles raging fires in the hearts of the
young, fans the flames that are almost dead in the old, awakens the
fever of passion in the chaste bosoms of virgins and instils a genial
warmth into the breasts of wives and widows equally. He has even
aforetime forced the gods, wrought up to a frenzy by his blazing torch,
to forsake the heavens and dwell on earth under false appearances.