Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Vainly tossing its horns and goring the wind to no purpose.
  2. Thence with abounding praise returned he, guiding his footsteps,
  3. While a fine drawn thread checked steps in wander abounding,
  4. Lest when issuing forth of the winding maze labyrinthine
  5. Baffled become his track by inobservable error.
  6. But for what cause should I, from early subject digressing,
  7. Tell of the daughter who the face of her sire unseeing,
  8. Eke her sister's embrace nor less her mother's endearments,
  9. Who in despair bewept her hapless child that so gladly
  10. Chose before every and each the lively wooing of Theseus?
  11. Or how borne by the ship to the yeasting shore-line of Dia
  12. Came she? or how when bound her eyes in bondage of slumber
  13. Left her that chosen mate with mind unmindful departing?
  14. Often (they tell) with heart inflamed by fiery fury
  15. Poured she shrilling of shrieks from deepest depths of her bosom;
  16. Now she would sadly scale the broken faces of mountains,
  17. Whence she might overglance the boundless boiling of billows,
  18. Then she would rush to bestem the salt-plain's quivering wavelet
  19. And from her ankles bare the dainty garment uplifting,
  20. Spoke she these words ('tis said) from sorrow's deepest abysses,
  21. While from her tear-drencht face outburst cold shivering sobs.
  22. "Thus from my patrial shore, O traitor, hurried to exile,
  23. Me on a lonely strand hast left, perfidious Theseus?
  24. Thus wise farest, despite the godhead of Deities spurned,
  25. (Reckless, alas!) to your home convoying perjury-curses?
  26. Naught, then, ever availed that mind of cruelest counsel
  27. Alter? No saving grace in you was evermore ready,
  28. That to have pity on me vouchsafed your pitiless bosom?
  29. Nevertheless not in past time such were the promises wordy
  30. Lavished; nor such hopes to me the hapless were bidden;
  31. But the glad married joys, the longed-for pleasures of wedlock.
  32. All now empty and vain, by breath of the breezes bescattered!
  33. Now, let woman no more trust her to man when he sweareth,
  34. Ne'er let her hope to find or truth or faith in his pleadings,
  35. Who when lustful thought forelooks to somewhat attaining,
  36. Never an oath they fear, shall spare no promise to promise.
  37. Yet no sooner they sate all lewdness and lecherous fancy,
  38. Nothing remember of words and reck they naught of fore-swearing.
  39. Certes, you did I snatch from midmost whirlpool of ruin
  40. Deadly, and held it cheap loss of a brother to suffer
  41. Rather than fail your need (O false!) at hour the supremest.
  42. Therefore my limbs are doomed to be torn of birds, and of ferals
  43. Prey, nor shall upheapt Earth afford a grave to my body.
  44. Say me, what lioness bare you 'neath lone rock of the desert?
  45. What sea spued you conceived from out the spume of his surges!