For, even through sight of her, the female wastes His strength with smouldering fire, till he forget Both grass and woodland. She indeed full oft With her sweet charms can lovers proud compel To battle for the conquest horn to horn. In Sila's forest feeds the heifer fair, While each on each the furious rivals run; Wound follows wound; the black blood laves their limbs; Horns push and strive against opposing horns, With mighty groaning; all the forest-side And far Olympus bellow back the roar. Nor wont the champions in one stall to couch; But he that's worsted hies him to strange climes Far off, an exile, moaning much the shame, The blows of that proud conqueror, then love's loss Avenged not; with one glance toward the byre, His ancient royalties behind him lie. So with all heed his strength he practiseth, And nightlong makes the hard bare stones his bed, And feeds on prickly leaf and pointed rush, And proves himself, and butting at a tree Learns to fling wrath into his horns, with blows Provokes the air, and scattering clouds of sand Makes prelude of the battle; afterward, With strength repaired and gathered might breaks camp, And hurls him headlong on the unthinking foe: As in mid ocean when a wave far of Begins to whiten, mustering from the main Its rounded breast, and, onward rolled to land Falls with prodigious roar among the rocks, Huge as a very mountain: but the depths Upseethe in swirling eddies, and disgorge The murky sand-lees from their sunken bed. Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts, And ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds, Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all. Never than then more fiercely o'er the plain Prowls heedless of her whelps the lioness: Nor monstrous bears such wide-spread havoc-doom Deal through the forests; then the boar is fierce, Most deadly then the tigress: then, alack! Ill roaming is it on Libya's lonely plains. Mark you what shivering thrills the horse's frame, If but a waft the well-known gust conveys? Nor curb can check them then, nor lash severe, Nor rocks and caverned crags, nor barrier-floods, That rend and whirl and wash the hills away. Then speeds amain the great Sabellian boar, His tushes whets, with forefoot tears the ground, Rubs 'gainst a tree his flanks, and to and fro Hardens each wallowing shoulder to the wound. What of the youth, when love's relentless might Stirs the fierce fire within his veins? Behold! In blindest midnight how he swims the gulf Convulsed with bursting storm-clouds! Over him Heaven's huge gate thunders; the rock-shattered main Utters a warning cry; nor parents' tears Can backward call him, nor the maid he loves, Too soon to die on his untimely pyre. What of the spotted ounce to Bacchus dear, Or warlike wolf-kin or the breed of dogs? Why tell how timorous stags the battle join? O'er all conspicuous is the rage of mares, By Venus' self inspired of old, what time The Potnian four with rending jaws devoured The limbs of Glaucus. Love-constrained they roam