tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330234824189595035.post8787494637925141941..comments2023-08-13T09:32:09.544-04:00Comments on LumpinProllie: Anybody Want More War?TeresaBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05117305248491938403noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330234824189595035.post-62889693134911465242009-03-01T03:19:00.000-05:002009-03-01T03:19:00.000-05:00Love and War Lovers all are soldiers, and Cup...Love and War<BR/> <BR/> Lovers all are soldiers, and Cupid has his campaigns:<BR/>I tell you, Atticus, lovers all are soldiers.<BR/>Youth is fit for war, and also fit for Venus.<BR/>Imagine an aged soldier, an elderly lover!<BR/>A general looks for spirit in his brave soldiery;<BR/>a pretty girl wants spirit in her companions.<BR/>Both stay up all night long, and each sleeps on the ground;<BR/>one guards his mistress's doorway, one his general's.<BR/>The soldier's lot requires far journeys; send his girl,<BR/>the zealous lover will follow her anywhere.<BR/>He'll cross the glowering mountains, the rivers swollen with storm;<BR/>he'll tread a pathway through the heaped-up snows;<BR/>and never whine of raging Eurus when he sets sail<BR/>or wait for stars propitious for his voyage.<BR/>Who but lovers and soldiers endure the chill of night,<BR/>and blizzards interspersed with driving rain?<BR/>The soldier reconnoiters among the dangerous foe;<BR/>the lover spies to learn his rival's plans.<BR/>Soldiers besiege strong cities; lovers, a harsh girl's home;<BR/>one storms town gates, the other storms house doors.<BR/>It's clever strategy to raid a sleeping foe<BR/>and slay an unarmed host by force of arms.<BR/>(That's how the troops of Thracian Rhesus met their doom,<BR/>and you, O captive steeds, forsook your master.)<BR/>Well, lovers take advantage of husbands when they sleep,<BR/>launching surprise attacks while the enemy snores.<BR/>To slip through bands of guards and watchful sentinels<BR/>is always the soldier's mission - and the lover's.<BR/>Mars wavers; Venus flutters: the conquered rise again,<BR/>and those you'd think could never fall, lie low.<BR/>So those who like to say that love is indolent<BR/>should stop: Love is the soul of enterprise.<BR/>Sad Achilles burns for Briseis, his lost darling:<BR/>Trojans, smash the Greeks' power while you may!<BR/>From Andromache's embrace Hector went to war;<BR/>his own wife set the helmet on his head;<BR/>and High King Agamemnon, looking on Priam's child,<BR/>was stunned (they say) by the Maenad's flowing hair.<BR/>And Mars himself was trapped in The Artificer's bonds:<BR/>no tale was more notorious in heaven.<BR/>I too was once an idler, born for careless ease;<BR/>my shady couch had made my spirit soft.<BR/>But care for a lovely girl aroused me from my sloth<BR/>and bid me to enlist in her campaign.<BR/>So now you see me forceful, in combat all night long.<BR/>If you want a life of action, fall in love.<BR/><BR/>Ovid <BR/><BR/>- translated from the Latin by Jon CorelisAlicehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13038018719406067477noreply@blogger.com