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OVID TO HIS WIFE.
IMITATED FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF HIS TRISTIA.
Jam mea cygneas imitantur tempora plumas,
Inficit et nigras alba senecta comas.
Trist. Lib. iv. Eleg. 8.
My aged head now stoops its honours low,
Bowed with the load of fifty winters' snow;
And for the raven's glossy black assumes
The downy whiteness of the cygnet's plumes:
Loose scattered hairs around my temples stray,
And spread the mournful shade of sickly gray:
I bend beneath the weight of broken years,
Averse to change, and chilled with causeless fears.
The season now invites me to retire
To the dear lares of my household fire;
