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I came from my home nigh unto the temple, before whose altars, with due devotion, I began thus to pray: 'O Venus, full of pity, sacred goddess whose altars I am joyful to approach, lend thou thy merciful ears unto my prayer; for I come to thee a young girl, though fairly fashioned yet ill-starred in love, fearful lest my empty years lead comfortless to a chill old age; therefore, if my beauty merit that I be counted among thy followers, enter thou into my breast who so desire thee, and grant that in the love of a youth not unworthy of my beauty, and through whom my wasted hours may be with delight made good, I may feel those fires of thine which many times and endlessly I have heard praised. I know not whether while I was thus engrossed in prayer I fell on sleep, and sleeping saw those things whereof I am about to tell, or whether, indeed, I was rapt thence in bodily form to see them; all I can tell is that suddenly I found myself borne through the heavens in a gleaming chariot drawn by white doves, and that inclining my eyes to things below I beheld the fruitful earth shrunk to a narrow room, and the rivers thereof after the fashion of serpents; and after that I had left behind the pleasant lands of Italy and the rugged mountains of Emathia, I beheld the waters of the Dircean fount and the ancient walls raised by the sound of Amphion's lyre, and soon there appeared to me the pleasant Cytherean mount, and on it resting the holy chariots drawn by the spotless birds.
A copious gale elevates the Dircean swan, O Antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but I, after the custom and manner of the Macinian bee, that laboriously gathers the grateful thyme, I, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate verses about the grove and the banks of the watery Tiber.
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