Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Naught, then, ever availed that mind of cruelest counsel
  2. Alter? No saving grace in you was evermore ready,
  3. That to have pity on me vouchsafed your pitiless bosom?
  4. Nevertheless not in past time such were the promises wordy
  5. Lavished; nor such hopes to me the hapless were bidden;
  6. But the glad married joys, the longed-for pleasures of wedlock.
  7. All now empty and vain, by breath of the breezes bescattered!
  8. Now, let woman no more trust her to man when he sweareth,
  9. Ne'er let her hope to find or truth or faith in his pleadings,
  10. Who when lustful thought forelooks to somewhat attaining,
  11. Never an oath they fear, shall spare no promise to promise.
  12. Yet no sooner they sate all lewdness and lecherous fancy,
  13. Nothing remember of words and reck they naught of fore-swearing.
  14. Certes, you did I snatch from midmost whirlpool of ruin
  15. Deadly, and held it cheap loss of a brother to suffer
  16. Rather than fail your need (O false!) at hour the supremest.
  17. Therefore my limbs are doomed to be torn of birds, and of ferals
  18. Prey, nor shall upheapt Earth afford a grave to my body.
  19. Say me, what lioness bare you 'neath lone rock of the desert?
  20. What sea spued you conceived from out the spume of his surges!