Haec ego mente. English translation. English translation by James Sitar. Back to Latin text. Open Latin text in new window.

Introduction. These lines are frequently subtitled a "Retraction" (see Stella Revard's Shorter Poems 192-93). There is some argument about whether the "vain trophies" (or trophies of vanity) refer to all the elegies selected for publication in the 1645 Poems, or just to Elegy 7. Revard thinks the "retraction" refers only to Elegy 7 based on the fact that it is printed on the half-page immediately following that poem in the 1645 Poems and because it concerns the theme of cupidinous desire featured in Elegy 7.

the shady Academy. That is, Plato and his teachings on love, chiefly in the Phaedrus and the Symposium. The poet plans to abandon elegy and its more carnal versions of love and prepares to embrace the more serious erotics of Plato and Xenophon, as Milton announced in his Apology for Smectymnuus (1642):

Thus from the Laureat fraternity of Poets, riper yeares, and the ceaselesse round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equall Xenophon. Where if I should tell ye what I learnt, of chastity and love, I meane that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only vertue which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy. The rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion which a certaine Sorceresse the abuser of loves name carries about.