Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, hear my voice, the herald of woe, hearken to the lamentable tale of your sorrow; loose the band from your hair, O you who brought forth sons to die by the murderous shafts of Phoebus! Your sons are dead!
But what more? What else do I see? Murder is poured on your daughters! One falls at her mother's knees, another on the ground, one in her arms, one on her breast. One shrinks in amazement as she faces the shaft, another cowers from the storm of arrows; one, whose eye yet lives, looks at the light.

It is wintry weather, but softly-weeping Love drags me from the feast and carries me to you, Myiscus.
Fierce desire is the raging wind—receive me into port, a sailor on the sea of Aphrodite!

Cleobulus is a white flower and Sopolis dark—twin blossoms of Aphrodite.
Desire follows me, for the loves are said to be woven from black (Melas) and white (agros) i.e. , Meleagér.

Aphrodite is my ship-owner, but Love governs the helm, holding my soul's rudder in his hand.
Fierce Desire is the raging wind; I swim in a sea of loves!

He is lovely, sweet and dear to me is the name of Myiscus; what reason have I for not loving him?
For he is beautiful, by Aphrodite, all beautiful; and if he is cruel — Love mingles bitter with the sweet.

O Leukastis, I play
Upon a Lydian harp —
A noble harp of twenty strings —
And thou art in thy youthful prime!

I was thirsty from the heat and a lovely-fleshed lad kissed me. As thirst fled far away, I said:
" Father Zeus, do you drink the kisses of your cup-bearer, does he pour wine thus to your very lips? For I have kissed Antiochus, the most beautiful of the young men, and I drank the sweet honey of his soul! "

Did I not cry to you my soul: " By Aphrodite, unhappy lover, you will be caught, flying too often to the snare! " Did I not warn you? The snare holds you. Why struggle vainly in the toils? Love himself binds your wings and kindles a fire and scatters myrrh on your breathless body, and gives hot tears for you to drink in your thirst.

Schemes unadvisable and out of reason
Are best adjourned. Wait for a proper season;
Time and a fair conjuncture govern all.
Hasty ambition hurries to a fall;
A fall predestined and ordained by heaven.
By a judicial blindness madly driven,
Mistaking and confounding good and evil,
Men lose their senses as they lose their level.

O Graces, you have looked at lovely Aristogoras and you have been clasped in his soft arms; so he glows with beauty and speaks pleasant things gently and says adorable things silently with his eyes.
May he be taken far from me! Yet what should I gain? Like Zeus on Olympus he hurls his lightnings afar!