Carmina

Catullus

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.

  1. Two-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father.
  2. He though, wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide,
  3. (Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet,
  4. Worthier diligent watch than grape-bunch blackest and ripest)
  5. Suffers her sport as she please nor rates her even at hair's worth,
  6. Nowise 'stirring himself, but lying log-like as alder
  7. Felled and o'er floating the fosse of safe Ligurian woodsman,
  8. Feeling withal, as though such spouse he never had own'd;
  9. So this marvel o' mine sees naught, and nothing can hear he,
  10. What he himself, an he be or not be, wholly unknowing.
  11. Now would I willingly pitch such wight head first fro' thy bridge,
  12. Better a-sudden t'arouse that numskull's stolid old senses,
  13. Or in the sluggish mud his soul supine to deposit
  14. Even as she-mule casts iron shoe where quagmire is stiffest.
  1. This grove to thee devote I give, Priapus!
  2. Who home be Lampsacus and holt, Priapus!
  3. For thee in cities worship most the shores
  4. Of Hellespont the richest oystery strand.
  1. This place, O youths, I protect, nor less this turfbuilded cottage,
  2. Roofed with its osier-twigs and thatched with its bundles of sedges;