Sulpicia Translations by Michael R. Burch
These are modern English translations by Michael R. Burch of seven Latin poems written by the ancient Roman female poet Sulpicia, who was apparently still a girl or very young woman when she wrote them.
I. At Last, Love!
by Sulpicia
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
for Carolyn Clark, who put me up to it
Antony In Arms
Lo, we are side by side! — One dark arm furls
Around me like a serpent warm and bare;
The other, lifted 'mid a gleam of pearls,
Holds a full golden goblet in the air:
Her face is shining through her cloudy curls
With light that makes me drunken unaware,
And with my chin upon my breast I smile
Upon her, darkening inward all the while.
And thro' the chamber curtains, backward roll'd
By spicy winds that fan my fever'd head,
I see a sandy flat slope yellow as gold
To the brown banks of Nilus wrinkling red
Around me like a serpent warm and bare;
The other, lifted 'mid a gleam of pearls,
Holds a full golden goblet in the air:
Her face is shining through her cloudy curls
With light that makes me drunken unaware,
And with my chin upon my breast I smile
Upon her, darkening inward all the while.
And thro' the chamber curtains, backward roll'd
By spicy winds that fan my fever'd head,
I see a sandy flat slope yellow as gold
To the brown banks of Nilus wrinkling red
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