Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Yet no sooner they sate all lewdness and lecherous fancy,
  2. Nothing remember of words and reck they naught of fore-swearing.
  3. Certes, you did I snatch from midmost whirlpool of ruin
  4. Deadly, and held it cheap loss of a brother to suffer
  5. Rather than fail your need (O false!) at hour the supremest.
  6. Therefore my limbs are doomed to be torn of birds, and of ferals
  7. Prey, nor shall upheapt Earth afford a grave to my body.
  8. Say me, what lioness bare you 'neath lone rock of the desert?
  9. What sea spued you conceived from out the spume of his surges!
  10. What manner Syrt, what ravening Scylla, what vasty Charybdis?
  11. you who for sweet life saved such meeds are lief of returning!
  12. If never willed your breast with me to mate you in marriage,
  13. Hating the savage law decreed by primitive parent,
  14. Still of your competence 'twas within your household to home me,
  15. Where I might serve as slave in gladsome service familiar,
  16. Laving your snow-white feet in clearest chrystalline waters
  17. Or with its purpling gear your couch in company strewing.
  18. Yet for what cause should I complain in vain to the winds that unknow me,
  19. (I so beside me with grief!) which ne'er of senses endued