Fragment #22

#22

Gather all around, my lovely maidens fair

My work is to write of glorious love, do I dare 

I face this task in the sun’s glimmer and glare

Beware of a love, so pure and rare

The springtime is bringing forth her blossoms from afar

Beckoning, if not, winter can’t tarnish nor mar

There’ll be no pain or anguish, bliss and happiness are

                   For them, peace, not a far off war

Virgins, I bid you sing of what you desire

Sing of Gongyla, Abanthis, taking up with their Sire

Take your lyre as now again longing, love will never tire  

A blaze floats around you, fire

We will enhance you, beauty, for her dress when you saw it

Sheer, diaphanous—the groom it stirred you, and I rejoice, permit

Me to say in fact she herself once blamed me, the robe loosely fit

                   Kyprogeneia, love’s fierce flames were already lit

This epithalamium because I prayed to you, great goddess

And you gave me this word , and my poem it shall possess

Finest lyrics ever writ, the word I shan’t repress but shall confess

                   The word is want, I want, I yearn, I crave to possess