Copyright (c) 2005 Wendee Holtcamp
Silvery sunset over a kayaker in Drum Bay, Texas
I found this on my writer friend and colleague Jenna Cavelle's blog and loved it so am posting it here. This is Ovid giving advice to a young man on the Art of Love:
Add gifts of mind to bodily advantage. A frail advantage is beauty, that grows less as time draws on and is devoured by its own years. O handsome youth, will soon come hoary hairs; soon will come furrows to make wrinkles in your body. Now make thee a soul that will abide, and add to it thy beauty; only that endures to the ultimate pyre. Nor let it be a slight care to cultivate your mind in the liberal arts, or to learn the two languages well. Ulysses was not comely, but he was eloquent; yet he fired two goddesses of the sea with love. Keep far away, quarrels and bitter-tongued affrays; with soft words must love be fostered. Should she be neither kindly nor courteous to your wooing, persist and steel your reslove; one day she will be kind. By compliance is the curved bough bent away from the tree; you will break it if you try your strength.
