Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Treading in tracks of a youth bewrayed with blood of a brother!
  2. Can I console my soul with the helpful love of a helpmate
  3. Who flies me with pliant oars, flies overbounding the sea-depths?
  4. Nay, if this Coast I quit, this lone isle lends me no roof-tree,
  5. Nor aught issue allows begirt by billows of Ocean:
  6. Nowhere is path for flight: none hope shows: all things are silent:
  7. All be a desolate waste: all makes display of destruction.
  8. Yet never close these eyes in latest languor of dying,
  9. Ne'er from my wearied frame go forth slow-ebbing my senses,
  10. Ere from the Gods just doom implore I, treason-betrayed,
  11. And with my breath supreme firm faith of Celestials invoke I.
  12. Therefore, O you who 'venge man's deed with penalties direful,
  13. Eumenides! aye wont to bind with viperous hairlocks
  14. Foreheads,—Oh, deign outspeak fierce wrath from bosom outbreathing,
  15. Hither, Oh hither, speed, and lend you all ear to my grievance,
  16. Which now sad I (alas!) outpour from innermost vitals
  17. Maugre my will, sans help, blind, fired with furious madness.
  18. And, as indeed all spring from veriest core of my bosom,
  19. Suffer you not the cause of grief and woe to evanish;
  20. But with the Will wherewith could Theseus leave me in loneness,
  21. Goddesses! bid that Will lead him, lead his, to destruction."

  22. E'en as she thus poured forth these words from anguish of bosom,
  23. And for this cruel deed, distracted, sued she for vengeance,
  24. Nodded the Ruler of Gods Celestial, matchless of All-might,
  25. When at the gest earth-plain and horrid spaces of ocean