Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Of country, parents, kith and kin (life's boon) myself debar?
  2. Fly Forum, fly Palestra, fly the Stadium, the Gymnase?
  3. Wretch, ah poor wretch, I'm doomed (my soul!) to mourn throughout my days,
  4. For what of form or figure is, which I failed to enjoy?
  5. I full-grown man, I blooming youth, I stripling, I a boy,
  6. I of Gymnasium erst the bloom, I too of oil the pride:
  7. Warm was my threshold, ever stood my gateways opening wide,
  8. My house was ever garlanded and hung with flowery freight,
  9. And couch to quit with rising sun, has ever been my fate:
  10. Now must I Cybele's she-slave, priestess of gods, be hight?
  11. I Maenad I, mere bit of self, I neutral barren wight?
  12. I spend my life-tide couch't beneath high-towering Phrygian peaks?
  13. I dwell on Ida's verdant slopes mottled with snowy streaks,
  14. Where homes the forest-haunting doe, where roams the wildling boar?
  15. Now, now I rue my deed foredone, now, now it irks me sore!"
  16. Whenas from out those roseate lips these accents rapid flew,
  17. Bore them to ears divine consigned a Nuncio true and new;
  18. Then Cybele her lions twain disjoining from their yoke
  19. The left-hand enemy of the herds a-goading thus bespoke:
  20. "Up feral fell! up, hie with him, see rage his foot-steps urge,
  21. See that his fury smite him till he seek the forest verge,
  22. He who with over-freedom fain would fly mine empery.
  23. Go, slash thy flank with lashing tail and sense the strokes of thee,
  24. Make the whole mountain to thy roar sound and resound again,
  25. And fiercely toss thy brawny neck that bears the tawny mane!"
  26. So quoth an angered Cybele, and yoke with hand untied:
  27. The feral rose in fiery wrath and self-inciting hied,
  28. A-charging, roaring through the brake with breaking paws he tore.
  29. But when he reached the humid sands where surges cream the shore,
  30. Spying soft Atys lingering near the marbled pave of sea