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The bull reclaim'd and yolk'd, the burden draws:This he says to show us that love may also be tamed by habit. Ovid is full of these sort of similes.
The horse receives the bit within his jaws.
And stubborn love shall bend beneath my sway,
Tho' struggling oft he tries to disobey.
He shakes his torch, he wounds me with his darts;
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But vain his force, and vainer are his arts.
The more he burns my soul, or wounds my sight,
The more he teaches to revenge the spite.
I boast no aid the Delphian god affords,
Nor auspice from the flight of chattering birds,From whence the ancients drew their auguries. To which the poet here alludes.
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Nor Clio, nor her sisters, have I seen,
As Hesiod saw them on the shady green:Ovid names Clio only, of all the nine, in this place. The fable tells us, she and her sisters were born of Jupiter's caresses of Mnemosyne, that is, memory.
Experience makes my work a truth so tried,
You may believe; and Venus be my guide.It has been before observed, that Ovid invokes the goddess of love to assist his song, as Lucretius does the same divinity for his world of nature, as being the mother of all generations, and all productions.
Far hence ye vestals be, who bind your hair;The author forewarns all virgins, and chaste persons, not to follow, in all things, the precepts of his book.
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And wives, who gowns below your ancles wear.
I sing the brothels loose and unconfin'd,
Th' unpunishable pleasures of the kind;
Which all alike for love or money find.
You, who in Cupid's roll inscribe your name,
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