Book I (l. 488-511) Christian and Amy - 8/21

...He yields to that, but your beauty itself prohibits that which is desired, and your beauty denies your prayer: Phoebus loves Daphne and having seen her, desires marriage, he hopes for that which he desires, and his own oracular powers deceive him, just as the light stubble of grain having been removed is destroyed by fire, as hedges burn by torch, which a traveler by chance either drew exceedingly near, or left behind now under daylight (at daybreak), so the god was consumed in flames, so his whole heart burns and feeds his fruitless love on hope. He looks at her unadorned hair hanging down her neck and said: "What if it was embellished?" He sees her eyes glittering like the brightness of the stars, sees her lips, which is not enough to just have seen; he praises her fingers and hands and wrists, and her arms bare to the shoulder; if what lies hidden he believes better. But she flees swifter than the nimble air and resists these words calling her back: "Nymph, I implore you, daughter of Peneus, stay! I, following, am no enemy. Nymph, stay! So the lamb flees from the wolf, so the deer from the lion, so doves with fluttering wings from the eagle, they all flee their enemies: love is to me a cause to follow! My misery! I am afraid that you may fall, or that the cruel thorns my mark or harm your limbs and might be causing pain to you! These are rough places which you hurry through: slow down, I ask you, stop your running and fleeing, and I too will follow more slowly."