You're trembling like a Fawn that flees.As many have noted, line 45 recalls Horace, Odes 1.23.1 (Vitas inuleo me similis, Chloe).
Allow, at least, my hand to rest
And play a little on your breast;
Or even lower, if you please.
Tu fuis comme fan qui tremble;
Au moins souffre que ma main
S'esbate un peu dans ton sein,
Ou plus bas, si bon te semble.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, August 24, 2025
Request
Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), Amours 1.12, lines 45-48 (tr. Anthony Mortimer):