The fact that you,
crushed by bitter fortune,
had written me this
short letter with your tears
About the shipwreck
in the foaming sea
That I may lift up
the threshold of death and restore
Him whom heavenly
Venus gently laid down to sleep
In the widowed bed
Nor muses delight
with sweet song
With an anxious mind
spent:
It is pleasing to
me, because you tell me a friend,
The gifts of both
the Muses and of Venus
In this poem I was so moved by my own pity and sorrow over the loss of My beloved brother. He was truly my best friend, no one understood me quiet like he did. Then to find out he was taken from this world near the ancient city of Troy, the place of death. I fear that my work in this poem may have been done much worse than I would have liked. The blame is to be on my emotional state and not being able to see straight from all the tears poring out of my eyes over the loss of my brother. This whole incident has left me with a twisted vision of things that are not so twisted. When you stop and truly think about them they are not so bad, but in my heart I hate them. The very ground the covers the land of troy Is cursed, if not by the gods, then the least by me. For when I even think about it all that fills my mind is death, and the death of my brother. The day that man told me that he was dead I was beside myself with grief and anguish. Then to make things even worse on top of everything that was going wrong in my world. My love my Lesbia has an affair. The one I thought I could look to for comfort and love and care, the one I gave my heart to. She tore it into little tiny pieces at the point in my life that was by far the hardest and most upsetting. If I could I would go back and never let her in my life, for she must have never truly loved me to walk out on me in such a dire hour. When you are in trouble you can truly tell who is there for you and who cares for you. Lesbia has taught me this lesson in the most challenging way to accept.
