The mind of man is such as Jove
Ordains by his immortal will,
Who moulds it in his courts above,
His heavenly purpose to fulfil.

Come then, my friend, and seize the flask,
And while the deck around us rolls,
Dash we the cover from the cask
And crown with wine our flowing bowls.
While the deep hold is tempest-tost,
We'll strain bright nectar from the lees;
For tho our freedom here be lost
We drink no water on the seas.

There are three Graces and three Hours, beautiful maidens; and I am pierced with the shafts of desire for three women.
Love drew three arrows against me to wound in me not one heart but three.

I give tears, poor tears, all that is left my love, to you, Heliodora, in Hades under the earth. On your tear-wet grave I lay the memory of our passion, the memory of our affection.
Bitterly, ah bitterly, Meleager mourns his dear one among the dead, her loveliness useless in Acheron.
Ah! where is my beloved olive-shoot? Broken, broken by death! Dust stains the lovely flower.
Earth, Mother of all, I beseech you as a mother, hold gently to your bosom one so bitterly wept.

O Tomb, what symbol is this? A fierce-eyed cock stands on you holding a sceptre in its blue-green wings and clutching a wreath of victory in its claws. At the edge of the base lies a die on the verge of falling.
Do you hold some sceptre-bearing king, mighty in battle? But then why the die? And why this simple tomb?
It would suit a poor man who was awakened by the crowing of the bird of night. Yet I think not, for the sceptre contradicts it.

Soft-fleshed Phanion cherished in her bosom me, the swiftfooted, long-eared leveret, carried off too young from my mother's breast, and fed me with spring flowers.
I did not pine for my mother, but I died from too much food, swollen with many meals.
She buried my body near her cottage so that in her dreams my grave might seem near her bed.

O cicada, drunken with drops of dew, you sing your country music in solitary places; you sit on the topmost leaf beating out the sound of a lyre with your rough legs on your sundarkened body.
Now sing some new gay song to the tree-nymphs, shrill out an answer to Pan, so that I may escape from love and sink into noon-tide sleep as I lie beneath this shady plane-tree.

Hades carried off as his bride, Erinna, the girl who sang new songs among the poets, a bee robbing the flowers of the Muses.
Truly it was wisdom when she said: " Thou art envious, O death! "

I cherish Love, the ball-player; he throws to you, Heliodora, the heart which trembles in me.
Let Desire come too as a player; but if you place me away from you I will not endure this breach of the rules of the palaestra!

Timarion, once a well-framed, polished, swift-sailing ship, is now despised by the sea-wandering oarsmen of Aphrodite.
The spine of her back is bent like the sail-yard of a mast, her hoary locks are ravelled out like halyards, her eunuch breasts flap like a slack sail and she has wrinkles in her belly like sea-waves. Below, the whole ship is water-logged, the sea overflows the hull; her knees lurch and quiver.
The luckless man who boards this twenty-oared old galley sails the marshes of Acheron before his time!