Renaissance Language Instruction

Faustus, cont’d.
Sed quid circuitu pario tibi taedia longo,
dum sequor ambages et verba et tempora perdo?
summa haec: vitales auras invitus agebam.
quod si forte volens cognoscere singula dicas,
“Fauste, quis in syrtes Auster te impegerat istas?”
me mea (verum etenim tibi, Fortunate, fatebor)
me mea Galla suo sic circumvenerat ore
ut captam pedicis circumdat aranea muscam.
namque erat ore rubens et pleno turgida vultu
et, quamvis oculo paene esset inutilis uno,
cum tamen illius faciem mirabar et annos,
dicebam Triviae formam nihil esse Dianae.

But why am I boring you with long rambles, chasing rabbit trails, and wasting words and time? Here’s the bottom line: I was alive against my will. But if by chance you were wishing to know the reasons for all this and were to say, “Faustus, what burning wind had thrown you onto such sandy shoals as these?”—

My Galla, (for indeed I will confess truly to you, Fortunatus), my Galla had trapped me with her appearance the way a spider surrounds a captive fly with her snares. For she was red-mouthed and swollen with a full face; and, although she was nearly blind in one eye, nevertheless during that time when I was stunned by her form and years, I used to say that the looks of Trivian Diana were nothing.

Faustus, cont’d:
colligere agrestes uvas et fraga perosus
maerebam ut pastu rediens philomena cibumque
ore ferens natis, vacuo sua pignora nido
cum sublata videt: rostro cadit esca remisso,
cor stupet et contra nidos super arboris altae
fronde sedet plorans infelices hymenaeos;
seu veluti amisso partu formosa iuvenca
quae, postquam latos altis mugitibus agros
complevit, residens pallenti sola sub umbra
gramina non carpit nec fluminis attrahit undam.

“Disgusted with gathering wild grapes and strawberries, I kept on grieving—like a nightingale who returns from the pasture carrying food in her mouth for her young. When she sees that her darlings have been carried away from her empty next, the worm falls from her slackened beak, her heart is struck numb, and in view of the nest, she settles on a high tree’s leafy branch, weeping over her barren marriage—or like a beautiful heifer who has lost her calf; after filling up wide fields with her loud bellows, she resides alone beneath the pale shade and does not graze on the grass nor drink the river’s water.”