Metrical Variation in a Lyric by Thomas Wyatt

 

 

Alas, Madam, for Stealing of a Kiss

Sir Thomas Wyatt

 

Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss

Have I so much your mind there offended?

Have I then done so grievously amiss

That by no means it may be amended?

 

Then revenge you, and the next way is this:

Another kiss shall have my life ended,

For to my mouth the first my heart did suck;

The next shall clean out of my breast it pluck.

 

 

 

     The difference between vers libre and metered forms is often exaggerated; it is never more than a matter of degree.  The freest of free verse has inevitably in English stress accents which will sometimes affect the reader’s impression.  On the other hand, the most rigorous of prosodists cannot make a pentameter of perfectly matching iambs as both ictus and remiss may have several levels of stress.  Considerations of pitch, duration, alliteration, and assonance complicate the picture further. 

     The significant question for writers who adopt any level of sonic organization in poetry is whether the sound effects contribute to the poem’s effect, whatever that might be.  While readers would differ from one another only in detail in a line’s scansion, far less consensus is probable about aesthetic effects.  One critic’s account of reactions might be inconsistent with another’s, yet over time a degree of common responses is likely to emerge.

     Metrical effects range from undeniable to vanishingly subtle, but they constitute a major part of the music of poetry.  Even a brief and simple lyric with what seems a transparent theme can prove elusive under close reading.  A brief, song-like lyric by Thomas Wyatt “Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss” may seem direct and explicit in form, its meter a straightforward iambic pentameter and its rhyme-scheme a simple abab abcc.  The alternate rhymes concluding with a couplet makes the poem resemble in part a truncated English sonnet.

     The first line establishes a clear pattern as it begins with three strong and clearly iambic feet.  Yet any reader will perceive that the “of” in the fourth foot receives less emphasis than the other stressed syllables (the second, fourth, sixth, and tenth), speeding the line’s conclusion and thus enacting the furtive and hasty theft of a kiss. 

     The same fourth foot is disturbed in the second line.  Whereas “of” in the first was weak enough to make “-ing of” a pyrrhic, this time the rhythm is reversed and the fourth foot (“there of-“) is a trochee, as is the fifth (“-fended”).  This arrangement not only continues the sense of something out of order, amiss, while drawing greater attention to the offense with the emphasis on the word “there” and the highlighting of the key syllable of “offended.”

     The same pattern of irregularity, sounding something like syncopation, recurs in the third line with the pyrrhic fourth foot, and then in the fourth where the reader finds yet another pyrrhic as the fourth foot (“be a-“) and a trochee as the fifth (“-mended”) as in line two.  Thus the stanza is tied into a tight package while at the same time the cadences indicate continued instability.

     The second stanza opens dramatically with a more irregular line which might be read as opening with two trochees (“Then revenge you”) followed by a pyrrhic (“and the”) only to recover the rhythm with two concluding iambs (“next way is this”).  The drumbeat continues for three more iambs in line 6 (“another kiss shall have my life”) which the ends in another reversal, the trochaic fifth foot (“ended”). 

     Resolution come with the final couplet.  The seventh line is a unambiguous iambic pentameter as though confidently setting forth a harmonization of the man’s and woman’s wishes (“For to my mouth the first my heart did suck”) with the new rhyme word, the harsh and unpleasant-sounding “suck.”  The final line begins with two regular feet followed by a pyrrhic (“out of”) which skips forward in a little rapid hop toward the two final iambs (“my breast it pluck”) and the grating final sound.  That concluding rhyme settles the matter but its croak suggests that all may not be solved. 

     The poem’s claim is clearly a rhetorical one, meant to impress the woman with a witty display indicating the author’s courtly savoir-faire, yet he dies in the end, victim of his heart’s exiting his body.  In literal terms, his second kiss would be his last, but it is unlikely that his ambitions were to halt so soon.  The ingenious verbal show is, of course, not for the lady alone, but for the court and today's reader as well, containing perhaps a bit of self-satire by the lover who does not realize he has promised his own extinction as a sign of devotion.  In the end it is a charming little game in which, at least in the seducer’s game book, she will grant a second kiss and a third and both can then wonder at his continued survival as love-making proceeds.

     This metrical variation is only a portion of the sonic structure of the poem, what Pound called melopoeia.  Apart from the metrical control suggested by this analysis, Wyatt also deploys rhyme to heighten both melody and meaning.  Thus “kiss” is paired with “amiss,” since the act is viewed as a trespass, and then settled by chiming with “this,” the proposed solution to the offense.  The rhyming of “offended” with “amended” imply a possible remedy to answer the complaint which is then resolved through the speaker’s theatrical pretense of a demise with “ended.”  He uses alliteration, for instance in the repeated uses of the letter m in the first four lines all associated with the  beloved (including the punning “amiss”). 

     In addition, apart from  the sound patterns, issues of source arise, first of all from the fact that the verse is based on Serafino Aquilano’s poem beginning “Incolpa donna amor se troppo io uolsi,” and instances of both Wyatt’s following his original and deviating from it are significant.  Petrarchans do not provide the sole influence.  The image of the heart rising during a kiss, for instance, is a trope familiar from the Greek Anthology.

     Even this small, apparently casual lyric, part of a sophisticated court’s play between the sexes, couched in a simple meter, not so distant from conversation, derives its effects from complex structures of sound, sense, and thought.  All must be unified or else, for good reason, jarring, with every element serving the reproduction of a moment of imagined consciousness: a person might have once felt this way.  Meter plays the role of a steady background beat against which every variation is perceptible and significant.  The poet need not, of course, be conscious of the means by which the poem works; an accomplished writer can often work from intuition like a skilled jazz soloist while for the reader or listener as well, the effects need not be understood to work well.

  

Sulpicia

 

     Sulpicia’s poems may be read in the original with English translation and notes on the Perseus site at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0071.  Other translations are available at https://people.uncw.edu/deagona/lit/Sulpicia.pdf (by Lee Pearcy) and https://www.classicscorner.org/translation (by seventeen-year-old Sarah Freeman).

 

 

     When discussing Sulpicia, consideration of her gender is inescapable due to the simple fact that very little survives of women’s writing from the ancient Roman world.  A good many texts which we know once existed have vanished: Cornelia’s letters, Agrippina’s memoirs, Hortensia’s speeches, poems by Catullus’ Clodia, even a later Sulpicia whom Martial praised, all these are lost [1].  It is therefore no wonder that the mere fact of a competent female Latin poet has attracted considerable interest, particularly in recent decades. 

     Her obscurity was long compounded by the fact that her elegies were folded into the Corpus Tibullianum, which includes texts by poets other than Tibullus [2].  The six poems now considered to be Sulpicia’s follow a group of five on the same love relationship called the “Garland of Sulpicia” or the Cerinthus-Sulpicia cycle, the authorship of which is uncertain.  One might write a meaningful study of the interference of non-aesthetic elements into literary evaluation by charting critics’ reactions to the Sulpicia poems once their female authorship had been accepted.  Some critics found the poems weak, with sexist critics using terms with gender associations such as naïve and emotional, while feminist readers found the poems asserting their own feminism.  Those who, consciously or not, think little of female writers are slow to recognize Sulpicia’s debts to earlier elegiac conventions while more sympathetic readers consider her allusions and literary debts substantial and sophisticated.  The present intention is largely descriptive, acknowledging the issue of gender in a context of Roman patriarchy but then proceeding without value assumptions either positive or negative from a woman as writer.

    Most love poetry – one need only think of the blues – deals with difficulties or disappointment in romance.  The first of the poems attributed to Sulpicia (Tibullus 3.13) instead expresses fulfilment.  In the opening phrase “love has finally come” (Tandem venit amor) the relationship seems accomplished and mutually satisfying.  The poet has, it seems, like Sappho, invoked the goddess of love, but here her success seems explicit.  The obstacle is only others, those who might not approve of the couple, the sort of meddlers called “serveriorum” and “malus” in Catullus 5 and “curioso” in Catullus 7, like unsympathetic parents in New Comedy and Romeo and Juliet or the “jealous ones” of Occitanian verse. 

     The tension of individual desire in a context of social conventions is present throughout this verse from the first line’s mention of pudor to her later concern at busybodies reading her love notes and the final declaration that she is glad to sin (pecasse), having found a satisfyingly mutual relationship signified by the closing phrase suggesting both lovers are worthy (“cum digno digna fuisse ferar”).  Poetry and the goddess have contributed to the temporary triumph at least of a personal love which brings an island of joy in a less than ideal world.

     The threats to a love relationship become specific in the second lyric 3.14 (or Sulpicia 2) in which the lover’s uncle insists she spend her birthday on his country estate when she would prefer to be with her beloved in Rome.  While the birthday poem (or γενεθλιακόν) was a recognized genre [3], it is here, rather than a celebration, a lament about the interfering uncle [4]. 

   In this case the poet’s intrusive relative is a prominent Roman, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a general and author (whose works are lost) and a significant patron of the arts like Maecenas.  He was particularly close with Tibullus and the poet known as Lygdamus, though he knew Horace and Ovid as well.  A powerful man, his authority over Sulpicia is unquestioned.  Yet she resists the excursion, preferring Cerinthus’ company and saying that the country estate Is cold (frigidus) and too rural (agro), unfit for a girl (puella).  The more conventional Latin praise of the rural life evident in, for instance, Martial 10.47 or Horace’s  Epode 2, is altogether lacking;  Sulpicia’s preference is for the city.

     The third poem, a pendant to the second,  indicates that Sulpicia’s wishes prevailed and she is able to observe her birthday with her lover.  The tone is especially intimate as the elegy is cast in the form of a letter to Cerinthus.

     The fourth reveals a different obstacle to love: Cerinthus is spending time with a courtesan.  The ambiguities about propriety in the first poem return here to describe a frivolous infidelity on the part of her beloved.  She pretends it is her family’s concern about reputation rather than her own jealousy that makes her angry.  She suggests that she deserves better as the daughter (filia Servi) of Servius Sulpicius Rufus the distinguished jurist, a student of Cicero when young and consul in maturity.  Invective similar to that used in iambic poems appears here in phrases like “obscure bed” (ignoto toro)  and “whore” (scortum), yet Sulpicia maintains her pose of superior composure, resisting being put into an absurd (inepta) situation.  Her anger nonetheless betrays her passion.

     In the fifth poem Sulpicia is ailing and wonders whether recovery would be worth it, since Cerinthus is behaving in a thoughtless manner.  Thoughts of suicide enter her mind as lovesickness complicates a physical illness.  She appeals to her lover as a petitioner, just as countless courtly love poems address the woman in a similar manner.

     The final poem associated with Sulpicia finds her again complaining of inattention, but blaming herself, suggesting the ruminations occasioned by the anxiety of love.  She regrets having pressed Cerinthus, fearing that she has alienated his affection further in taking a standoffish approach, what the troubadours were to call daunger.

     Considered together, Sulpicia’s poems present the reader with a picture of a love relationship consistent with elegiac conventions which anticipates the love poetry of the High Middle Ages.  While one of her poems seems to celebrate love’s fulfilment, frustration -- with her uncle, her lover, and herself -- is the more common theme.  Far from writing about lust, Sulpicia is primarily concerned with a mutually affectionate relationship, and repeatedly expresses anxiety about her lover’s emotional commitment, only to question her own gambits in trying to retain his devotion.  Some would regard this delicacy, along with the social limitations suggested by her uncle’s authority over her and her lover’s option of a purchased sexual partner, as indicative of her femininity, but such judgements have no effect on evaluation nor do they constitute a protest against ancient Roman patriarchal values. 

     If the judgement of Kirby Flower Smith in calling her an “amateur” whose primary gift is “simplicity” and who “writes from a full heart” is prejudiced, Ezra Pound’s claim that to translate her forty lines would be worth ten years of one’s life is at least hyperbolic [5].  As a woman writer of love elegies, she is neither a naïve imitator of male models nor is she a standard bearer for women’s rights.  The six poems attributed to Sulpicia constitute a satisfying pocket drama, complicated by the tensions between insistent passionate love on the one hand and limitations in one’s society and in one’s partner or oneself on the other. 

 

 

 

 

1.  They are known only because they are mentioned in other people’s writing: see Cicero Brutus 58.211,  Tacitus (Annals 4.53.3) and Pliny (Naturalis historia 7.46) for Agrippina, Valerius Maximus (8.3.3) and Quintilian (De institutione oratorio 1.1.4-8) for Hortensia.  A scholiast quotes two iambic lines of the later Sulpicia (sometimes called the satirist) in a manuscript known only from a citation in a fifteenth century edition of Juvenal.  Martial praises her in 10.35.

 

2.  They had long been known as Tibullus 3.13-3.18, but are today  sometimes identified as Sulpicia 1-6. 

 

3.  Among Latin examples of the genre are Tibullus 1.7, and 2.2, Propertius 3.10, Ovid, Prop. III 10, Ov. Tr. III 13, V 5, Pers. 2, Mart. VII 21, 22, 23, IX 52, 53, and X 24.

 

4.  An uncle is similarly an obstacle to love in Horace Odes 3.12.

 

5.  For Smith, see The Elegies of Albius Tibullus (1913). Pound’s comment is in “Horace,” in The Criterion 9 (1929-1930), reprinted in Arion 9 (1970). 

Catullus’ Currency of Kisses: New translations of Catullus V, VII, and XLVIII

 

 The Latin texts of the poems are appended.

 

 

     Erotic relationships seem sometimes, to some lovers, reducible to the rules of accountancy: a bit of pleasure in return for a certain amount of trouble, a financial cost balanced against flights of delight.  When upbraiding Ameana for an excessive fee (41) or complaining of Aulifilena’s deception (110), Catullus displays the confident misogyny of a substantial citizen in a patriarchy.

     Yet with passionate attachments, the values shift dramatically.  One lover’s side, at least, of the exchange can balloon to virtually infinite value which may or may not be equaled by the love object.  Catullus expresses the degree of romantic love by a figure of speech, as innumerable kisses. [1]  The association of love and kisses is natural, of course, but, when the kisses become uncountable, the image signifies the power of eros.  Such lover’s desperation may lead either to love-sickness, depression, and the miserable conviction that one has been playing the fool or, for the more fortunate, to an ascent to Elysium. 

     In Catullus XLVIII the convention appears at its simplest in the context of gay relationship. 

 

Your honeyed eyes, Juventius,

if I could kiss them on and on,

three hundred thousand times would not

suffice.  I’d never have enough,

not if they numbered more than grains

could grow in fields of one estate.

 

     A hyperbolic compliment, but one fully intended in passionate moods, the hundreds of thousands of kisses remain still insufficient to express the lover’s emotion.  He cannot rest in languorous pleasure, but always wants more.  Love is measured by a currency of kisses, and the quantity must be countless to indicate the ineffable magnitude of the love. 

     The association here, first with honey and then with ears of cereal grain reinforces this indefinite and enthusiastic measure of love, and links the poem to archaic practices designed to foster fertility, human, animal, and vegetable alike. [2]  If, as Frazer reported, people would copulate in their fields in hopes of a good harvest, holding one’s lover may remain, in a vestigial way, a ritual of sympathetic magic to renew the world.  Such a link has at least an emotional reality, recorded in all the poems of spring’s regreening accompanying the blossoming of romance. 

     Catullus VII first extends the hyperbole, with an elaborate series of references at first geographical, then historic and cosmic. 

 

How many, Lesbia, kisses between us,

might be enough to surfeit me and more?

As many as the grains of Libyan sand

that lie in Cyrene where the silphium grows,

between the oracle of torrid Jove

and Battus’ old and holy sepulchre,

as many as the stars in silent night

that see all peoples’ secret love affairs.

So many kisses must the mad Catullus have

to be enough and then some, too,

so that the curious can never count

nor any tongue cast evil words our way.

 

This lyric reinforces the kisses’ meaning familiar from XLVIII and expandss it with concrete specifics, while also adding considerable semantic territory.  Extravagant love, measurable only by countless kisses, is associated with the exotic (Cyrene), the rare and precious (silphium or asafoetida), the sensual (“torrid”), and yet the venerable (the grave of the city’s founder) and indeed the universally human (“peoples’ secret love affairs”). 

     Rich in content if lacking the straightforward and spontaneous-seeming apparent speaking from the heart of XLVIII this poem suddenly turns in the final two lines to reveal a new aspect of the lovers’ situation.  Whereas the original referent of the currency of kisses had been erotic intensity, here they provide a mystical protection from hostile busybodies very like the “jealous ones” of Troubadour lyric over a millennium later.  As a subjective experience of the lovers from which all others are excluded, the kisses create a private utopian world, protected against all threats by the power of their affection.  These ill-wishers are the projection of the lovers’ fear that their bliss is endangered and perhaps cannot last.

     In V, likely the most familiar Catullan carmina, the motif of countless kisses is employed in service of the carpe diem topos.  Here it spotlights the contrast between the couple’s delirium of love-making and those disapproving superannuated meddlers. 

 

Oh, let us live, my Lesbia, let us love!

And any idle talk of crabbed old men

we’ll value at one pennyworth, no more.

The sun, we know, will set and rise again,

and yet, for us, when our brief light is gone,

what follows then will be an endless sleep. 

A thousand kisses and a hundred more I want,

another thousand, and a hundred yet,

and when the thousands upon thousands mount,

we’ll stir the pot and then we’ll never know

and those who envy us won’t know as well

how many kisses you and I enjoyed.

 

The seventh through the tenth lines simply juggle numbers, indicating the ineffable quality of a necessarily private erotic experience.  Like a jazz singer going into scatting the artist best approximates the joy of love by admitting its inexpressibility.  The two are so confidently in control that they, as though with a wave of a magic wand, can fling the scene into confusion and frustrate the hostile intentions of the envious while enjoying the marvels of each other’s bodies.   

     Catullus’ lyrics portray a range of lovers, some selfish, some selfless.  For him erotic play was could be simple recreation without emotional engagement, but other verses suggest a whole-hearted tumble into total commitment scarcely expressible in words.  Adopting the apparently natural association of love and kisses, he elaborates the imagery of a currency of kisses to signify a passion so great as to require a figure of speech, so great it may provide an apotropaic charm against the invidious. 

     A master of invective and insult and capable of plain-speaking to the point of outright vulgarity, Catullus was at the same time a virtuoso of love poetry whose elegant and original language might be either ardent or nasty.  His range is evident in another poem using the multitude of kisses topos.  In his most notorious poem (XVI) he complains that Aurelius and Furius have mistaken his romantic side for weakness, and the very image under discussion is to blame.   “Because I write of countless kisses, you think me as less a man?” Catullus defends his masculinity with the purest sexual aggression “I will fuck your ass and mouth”. [3]  That this verse is written by the same author who wrote as a devotee of true love only suggests the breadth and variety of the wild territory of eros. 

 

 

 

1.  Among others who use the same image is Baudelaire who in “Le Balcon” exclaims “ô baisers infinis!”

 

2.  Leah O’Hearn demonstrates the details of the implications of honey and of grain, particularly the latter’s association with the emergence of facial hair in Classical love poetry.   See “Title: Juventius and the Summer of Youth in Catullus 48,” Mnemosyne LXXIV, 1.

 

3.  “Vōs, quod mīlia multa bāsiōrum, lēgistis male mē marem putātis?” and (“Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō”. 

 

 

 

 

 

XLVII

Mellitos oculos tuos, Iuventi,

siquis me sinat usque basiare,

usque ad milia basiem trecenta,

nec unquam videar satur futurus,

non si densior aridis aristis

sit nostrae seges osculationis.

 

 

VII

Quaeris, quot mihi bāsiātiōnēs

tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.

Quam magnus numerus Libyssae harēnae

lasarpīciferīs iacet Cyrēnīs

ōrāclum Iovis inter aestuōsī

et Battī veteris sacrum sepulcrum;

aut quam sīdera multa, cum tacet nōx,

fūrtīvōs hominum vident amōrēs:

tam tē bāsia multa bāsiāre

vēsānō satis et super Catullō est,

quae nec pernumerāre cūriōsī

possint nec mala fascināre lingua.

 

 

V

Vivāmus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum severiorum

omnes unius aestimemus assis!

soles occidere et redire possunt;

nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda.

da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum;

dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,

conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

aut ne quis malus invidere possit,

cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

The Belated Eroticism of Agathias Scholasticus

Numbers in parentheses refer to poems in Book 5 of the Greek Anthology. The Greek original and a new translation of 5.294 follow the discussion. 

     In the sixth century of the Christian era Agathias Scholasticus produced a new edition of the Greek Anthology, taking the editor’s privilege of including a generous share of his own epigrams. His period marked the transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages. During his lifetime the eastern emperor Justinian required citizens to profess Christianity, suppressed the pagan rhetors, and ended government support for the neo-Platonic Academy. Agathias himself was steeped in pre-Christian tradition; many readers suspect he had only a veneer of Christianity. He was a substantial historian, continuing Procopius’ History of Justinian, while practicing as well as a lawyer and civic activist. As pater civitatis he assumed the management of the renovation of the public latrines in Smyrna, inspiring him to write epigrams celebrating the salutary improvement he had brought, but also moralizing: “All the extravagance of mortals and their expensive dishes excreted here have lost their previous charm.” (GA 9.662 and 642) 

      The fifth book of the Anthology, titled "Amatory Epigrams” contains twenty-three poems by Agathias, virtually none of which expresses simple, straightforward passion. The poet himself problematizes his erotics in an epigram lamenting the unsuitability of each option for love object. (302) Every choice, he laments, is accompanied by inconvenience. Neither courtesans, nor virgins, nor wife, nor other men’s wives, nor widows, nor serving maids will do. One might as well, he concludes, imitate Diogenes and choose masturbation. 

      Though that conclusion hardly sounds romantic, Agathias is nonetheless capable of deploying certain familiar romantic tropes: the complaint of a watchful duenna (289), the lover’s subjugation by the beloved (299) or suffering a sleepless night and hoping for a dream, at least, of love. (237) 

      Other epigrams cover a surprisingly broad range. They include conversational pieces such as a graduate student’s letter home missing his girlfriend and male friend (292), a comment on the isolation of women (297), and a simple declaration of heterosexuality. (278) Though considering age in general the enemy of desire (273), he appreciates the sexiness of an old lady. (282) 

      A group of his epigrams depend upon word games and jeux d’esprit. In one (218) he describes what seems to be an adulterous intrigue using names adapted from contemporary drama, while in another he plays on the mythological associations of the name of Ariadne. (222) 

      Another group of Agathias’ poems testify to the power of symbolically displaced, or fetishized eroticism. For instance, in one (285) he kisses her “girdle” instead of her flesh, while in another he relishes the cup that has touched her lips. (261) In others he addresses the lamp that has overseen his amours (263), and describes the gift of a “coif” that can becomingly bind her midriff. (276) 

      In general the poets of the Anthology are as likely to speak of one night stands with prostitutes or men as of enduring affairs of the heart. Thus Agathias’ casual and worldly persona is likely less a reflection of his own emotional sensibility as of the norms of his age. In the proem to his edition of the collection as a whole he suggests that poetry is primarily a source if pleasure for the surfeited or jaded appetites of his listeners. This pose is explicit in the introductory verses which take the form of an address to his audience, a cultivated company headed by the leading local cavalry officer. They would have enjoyed a dinner as lavish as the host could make it. Wine was certainly flowing. Perhaps it was before the flute-girls that Agathias would have been asked to present some elegant epigrams, the best of earlier times mixed with a number of the new.  

     This dramatic setting is useful reinforcement to Agathias’ opening image. Agathias declares that he means to spread a verbal πανδαισία, for which Liddell and Scott offer the glorious if slightly mystifying definition “a complete banquet, a banquet at which nothing fails.” He fears that the guests may be already sated (ἐμπεπλησμένους) with literature, stuffed, indeed, to belching (τὰ σιτία προσκόρως ἐρυγγάνειν) with the magnificent and varied board of poetry already available from earlier eras. 

     The weight of the greatness of Greek tradition is evident in the poet’s heavy use of convention in metrics, imagery, and theme. Yet, after a rhetorical claim that he expects a reader to be indulgent toward his work out of courtesy alone, he promises to provide novelty. (l. 20) The poem has little to say about love itself and a good deal about barriers to love. While it is true that most love literature from all ages is concerned with overcoming such obstacles, their description is usually accompanied by considerable praise of the beloved. Agathias’ poem takes the passion for granted and speaks only of impediments.

    The poem appeals to me for its decadence. Reminiscent of the great Pervigilium Veneris, the poem implies a refined pleasure in simply contemplating the barriers to satisfaction, maintaining the lover’s sustained pre-orgasmic condition. I am reminded of the Daoist sexual regimen which eschewed completion of the sexual act in an effort to build qi. One might consider Agathias’ poem and others like it as the product of a hedonism for which simple love has gone flat or, whether alternatively or simultaneously, as a contemplative exercise, a kind of meditation on desire. 

translation note 

     Believing the modern ear to be deaf to the ancient meters, even apart from the change from quantitative to accentual/syllabic prosody, I have not attempted to duplicate the elegiac couplets characteristic of the epigram form. Instead the whole thing is basically in iambic hexameter, a rare choice in English. There is most often a line by line correspondence between Greek and English. An extra syllable hangs on the end like a prolonged sigh. 

Greek Anthology 5.294 

The envious old woman lay next to the young, 

fixed crosswise over all the broad expanse of bed, 

extended like a bastion to block invaders there. 

My lady’s veiled by ample folds of sheets and quilts. 

Her so conceited handmaid barred the entry door.

She lies asleep, weighed down with too much unmixed wine. 

Still unafraid, I reached out with my hand to lift 

 and open up the bar that latched the door. The draft 

from one quick wave of cloak then quenched each fiery torch. 

I slinked through crosswise softly through the room, 

Avoiding then the sleeping guard I pulled myself 

in further, underneath the bed frame, lying prone 

 I pulled myself up just a bit to lean against 

the wall and propped up there I then did face my love. 

Caressing both her breasts I lightly kissed her face. 

My lips played all about and felt her softness there. 

The only prize I captured was her lovely mouth.

The only sign I had of my advance that night 

I haven’t breached the walls of her virginity. 

That still remains untouched. For now I will not try. 

The ramparts will not stop me. Should all go my way, 

I’ll weave a wreath for you, o Cypris of love’s spoils. 

 ἡ γραῦς ἡ φθονερὴ παρεκέκλιτο γείτονι κούρῃ 

δόχμιον ἐν λέκτρῳ νῶτον ἐρεισαμένη, 

προβλὴς ὥς τις ἔπαλξις ἀνέμβατος: οἷα δὲ πύργος 

ἔσκεπε τὴν κούρην ἁπλοῒς ἐκταδίη: 

καὶ σοβαρὴ θεράπαινα πύλας σφίγξασα μελάθρου 

κεῖτο χαλικρήτῳ νάματι βριθομένη. 

ἔμπης οὔ μ᾽ ἐφόβησαν ἐπεὶ στρεπτῆρα θυρέτρου 

χερσὶν ἀδουπήτοις βαιὸν ἀειράμενος, 

φρυκτοὺς αἰθαλόεντας ἐμῆς ῥιπίσμασι λώπης 

ἔσβεσα: καὶ διαδὺς λέχριος ἐν θαλάμῳ 

τὴν φύλακα κνώσσουσαν ὑπέκφυγον ἦκα δὲ λέκτρου 

νέρθεν ὑπὸ σχοίνοις γαστέρι συρόμενος, 

ὠρθούμην κατὰ βαιόν, ὅπη βατὸν ἔπλετο τεῖχος: 

ἄγχι δὲ τῆς κούρης στέρνον ἐρεισάμενος, 

μαζοὺς μὲν κρατέεσκον: ὑπεθρύφθην δὲ προσώπῳ, 

μάστακα πιαίνων χείλεος εὐαφίῃ. 

ἦν δ᾽ ἄρα μοι τὰ λάφυρα καλὸν στόμα, καὶ τὸ φίλημα 

σύμβολον ἐννυχίης εἶχον ἀεθλοσύνης. 

οὔπω δ᾽ ἐξαλάπαξα φίλης πύργωμα κορείης, 

ἀλλ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἀδηρίτῳ σφίγγεται ἀμβολίῃ. 

ἔμπης ἢν ἑτέροιο μόθου στήσωμεν ἀγῶνα, 

ναὶ τάχα πορθήσω τείχεα παρθενίης, 

οὐ δ᾽ ἔτι με σχήσουσιν ἐπάλξιες. ἢν δὲ τυχήσω, 

στέμματα σοὶ πλέξω, Κύπρι τροπαιοφόρε.