use, and again he urges them on, and
will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time.
When the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and
he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at
length he on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again.
And when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and
takes the bit in his teeth and pulls shamelessly. Then the charioteer is
worse off than ever; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with
a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild
steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his
legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And when this
has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton
way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer,
and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. And from
that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty
and holy fear.

And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal
service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also
himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he
has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his
youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be
disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led
to receive him into communion. For fate which has ordained that there
shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall
ever be friendship among the good. And the beloved when he has received
him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the
lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other
friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be
compared with his. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer
to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of
meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in
love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some
enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as
a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it
came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are
the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving
and quicken