The Art of Love: Book Two

…Short partings do best, though: time wears out affections,

The absent love fades, a new one takes its place.

With Menelaus away, Helen's disinclination for sleeping

Alone led her into her guest's

Warm bed at night. Were you crazy, Menelaus?

Why go off leaving your wife

With a stranger in the house? Do you trust doves to falcons,

Full sheepfolds to mountain wolves?

Here Helen's not at fault, the adulterer's blameless -

He did no more than you, or any man else,

Would do yourself. By providing place and occasion

You precipitated the act. What else did she do

But act on your clear advice? Husband gone; this stylish stranger

Here on the spot; too scared to sleep alone -

Oh, Helen wins my acquittal, the blame's her husband's:

All she did was take advantage of a man's

Human complaisance. And yet, more savage than the tawny

Boar in his rage, as he tosses the maddened dogs

On lightening tusks, or a lioness suckling her unweaned

Cubs, or the tiny adder crushed

By some careless foot, is a woman's wrath, when some rival

Is caught in the bed she shares. Her feelings show

On her face. Decorum's flung to the wind, a maenadic

Frenzy grips her, she rushes headlong off

After fire and steel… .