Love Prisoner of the Muses (Ode)

The Muses one day bound up

In chains of roses Love,

And, to hold him, gave him

To the Graces and to Beauty,

Who, seeing his disloyalty,

On Parnassus imprisoned him.

As soon as Venus heard it,

She sold her fair girdle

To Vulcan, for the deliverance

Of her child, and suddenly,

Having in her hands money,

To the Muses made reverence:

“Muses, goddesses of chansons,

If needed were four ransoms

For my child, bide no longer;

Deliver my imprisoned son.”

But the Muses bound him up

With a chain still stronger.

Courage then, lovers,

You’ll be no longer languorous:

Love is at the end of his ruses;

No more dares that false garçon

To refuse you some chanson,

Since he is prisoner of the Muses.

Pierre de Ronsard