Free The Art of Love by Ovid Page A

the times the naughty jade
    Mocked her husband’s bandy legs and made
    Fun of his hands coarsened by fire and trade!
    In front of Mars she had but to imitate
    Vulcan’s peculiar gait,
    And charm lent piquancy to beauty acting lame.
    At first, through modesty and shame,
    They kept their affair dark, but the game
    Was up when the Sun (who can fool that all-viewing
    God?) told Vulcan what his wife was doing.
    (You’re a bad example, Sun. Just ask her, and she’ll treat
    You to it too, if only you’re discreet.)
    And so Vulcan set,
    All round and over the bed, an invisible net,
    And shammed a trip to Lemnos. The lovers met
    As arranged, were caught stark naked in the snare,
    Vulcan invited the gods round, and the pair
    Made a ridiculous spectacle. Venus, they say,
    Could hardly restrain her tears. Anyway,
    They couldn’t conceal their faces or even move
    Their hands away from the private parts of love.
    One god laughed: “Brave Mars, I see
    Your chains are a nuisance—hand them over to me!”
    It took all Neptune’s pleading before Vulcan agreed
    Reluctantly to release them. Freed
    From their embrace,
    Venus rushed off to Paphos, Mars to Thrace.
    So what, Vulcan, did you achieve?
    The formerly furtive couple leave
    And carry on with even less
    Shame than before. Word has it that you now confess
    You acted like a lunatic
    And bitterly regret your clever trick.
    Be warned by the fate of Venus, beware
    Of setting the sort of snare
    She
had to suffer. Don’t forge fetters
    For rivals, don’t intercept secret letters;
    Leave all that for accredited husbands to handle—
    If they think the detective game is worth the candle.
    I repeat, there’s no sport here the law doesn’t permit:
    Married ladies don’t feature in
my
wit.
    [L ATIN :
Quis Cereris ritus…
]
        Who’d dare to incur the disgrace
    Of publishing the mysteries of Samothrace
    Or the rites of Ceres to the common crowd?
    One needn’t feel all that proud
    Of keeping silence, but to profane
    The sacred, the arcane,
    Is a grave crime. Tantalus, for breaching
    The gods’ secrets, is still reaching
    For ungraspable apples on the tree,
    Standing thirst-parched in water, and deservedly.
    Venus is a stickler in this matter:
    I warn you, any man prone to chatter
    About her holy mysteries is forbidden
    To mix with them. They may not involve things hidden
    In caskets, they may forgo
    The wild clashing of cymbals, but even so
    They’re so much part of our daily life and feeling
    That they demand concealing.
    Venus herself, when she poses nude,
    Stoops, left hand hiding her sex in an attitude
    Of modesty. Animals couple all over the place,
    In public—indeed, a girl has to avert her face—
    But the secret acts of human lovers
    Call for bedrooms, locked doors, blankets, covers
    For our private parts, and, if not the darkness of night,
    We want something less bright
    Than the sun’s glare, preferably half-light.
    Long ago, when mankind was still not proof
    Against sun and rain, before they invented the roof,
    Shelter and food were supplied by the oak,
    And the sense of shame was so strong in primitive folk
    That they made love
    Not in the open air, but in a cave or grove.
    But with
our
night sports it’s all “making” and “score”;
    We pay too high a price for nothing more
    Than the power to boast. Do you really want to comb
    The whole female population of Rome
    Just to be able to tell friends you meet,
    “I’ve had her too,” so that no street
    Lacks examples to point at? And will you repeat
    Some leering story about each? I complain
    About trifles: there are some men so vain
    That if their lies were all true they’d have to back down—
    They claim they’ve slept with every girl in town!
    If they can’t touch a body, they finger a name;
    Though flesh escapes, reputation’s smeared with shame.
    Get busy, then, doorman, whom we love to hate,
    Lock her chamber door, put a hundred bolts on the gate,
    For where is security when her name is heard
    Bandied