Ovid's Tristia, containing five books of mournful elegies which he sweetly composed in the midst of his adversity, while he liv'd in Tomos, a city of Pontus, where he died after seven years banishment from Rome / translated into English by W.S.

ELEGIE XIV.

Here he writes unto his Friend, That he would his books defend.

THou chief of Learned men, what maketh thee; A friend unto my idle vein to be? When I was safe then thou my lines didst praise, And being absent thou my fame dost raise. And all my verses thou dost entertain. Except the Art of Love which I did frame. Since then thou lovest the new Poets strain, Within the City still keep up my Name. For I, and not my books, am banisht thence, Which they could not deserve by my offence. The Father oft is banished we see, While as his Children in the City be: My verses now are like to Pallas, borne Without a Mother; and being so forlorne, I send them unto thee, for they bereft Of Father, now unto thy charge are left. Three sons of mine by me destroyed were, But of the rest see that thou have a care. And fifteen books of changed shapes there lyes, Being ravisht from their Masters obsequies. That work I had unto perfection brought, If that I had not my own mine wrought.

Which uncorrected now the people have, If any thing of mine the people crave. Let this among my other books now stand, Being sent unto thee from a foraign Land. Which whoso reads, let him but weigh again, The time and place, wherein I did it frame: He will pardon me, when he shall understand, That I was banisht in a barbarous Land. And will admire that in my adverse time, With a sad hand I could draw forth a line: Mis-fortunes have depriv'd me of my strain, Although before I ne're had a rich vein. Yet whatsoe're it was, even now it lies, Dried up for want of any exercise. Here are no books to feed me with delight. But in stead of books the bows do me affright. Here's none to whom I may my lines rehearse, That can both hear and understand my verse. I have no place where I may walk alone. But with the Getes shut up in walls of stone. Somtimes I ask for such a places name, But there is none can answer me again. And when I fain would speak, I must confess, I want fit words my mind for to express. The Seythian language doth my ear affright. So that the Getick tongue I sure could write, I fear lest you within this book should see, That Pontick words with Latin mingled be. Yet read it, and thereto a pardon give, When thou considerest in what state I live.