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While you with learned, kind and lovely hand
Pluck nimbly at the stems of fragrant flowers
In fields enamelled with a thousand colours
By the sacred work of the immortal band:
Take care that Love, veiled in the bright attire
Of some fresh flower, doesn’t air his ardour
And, rather than appease your heart’s disorder,
Compound it with a well-aimed shaft of fire.
Guileless Europa, gathering blooms like you,
Was overcome by Love, Persephone too –
One a king’s daughter and the other a goddess.
All it would take is a quick breath of breeze
On a red coal to give rise to a blaze
Of which you would no longer be the mistress. | 
