The Complaint of Nature

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The complaint of nature, Yale studies in English, v. 36 (1908), Translation of De planctu natura. by Douglas M. Moffat. Pagination preserved in etext form.

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Page 49 - ... if it does not transgress the determined boundaries of the dual activity, or its heat boil to too great a degree. But if its spark shoots into a flame, or its little spring rises to a torrent, the rankness of the growth demands the pruning-knife, and the swelling «• and excess requires...
Page 3 - Natwa, in order to call attention to the prevalence of homosexual feeling; he also associated the neglect of women with sodomy. "Man is made woman," he writes; "he blackens the honor of his sex, the craft of magic Venus makes him of double gender"; nobly beautiful youths have "turned their hammers of love to the office of anvils," and "many kisses lie untouched on maiden lips.
Page 3 - ... orphan. The sex of active nature trembles shamefully at the way in which it declines into passive nature. Man is made woman, he blackens the honor of his sex, the craft of magic Venus makes him of double gender. He is both predicate and subject, he »• becomes likewise of two declensions, he pushes the laws of grammar too far.
Page 45 - ... in the outskirt world I stationed Venus, who is skilled in — the knowledge of making, as under-deputy of my work, in order that she, un^der my judgment and guidance, and with the assisting activity of her husband Hymen and her son Cupid, by laboring at the various...

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