Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Longèd the sire to sight his first-born's funeral convoy
  2. So more freely the flower of step-dame-maiden to rifle;
  3. After that impious Queen her guiltless son underlying,
  4. Impious, the household gods with crime ne'er dreading to sully—
  5. All things fair and nefand being mixt in fury of evil
  6. Turned from ourselves avert the great goodwill of the Godheads.
  7. Wherefor they nowise deign our human assemblies to visit,
  8. Nor do they suffer themselves be met in light of the day-tide.
  1. Albeit care that consumes, with dule assiduous grieving,
  2. Me from the Learnèd Maids (Hortalus!) ever seclude,
  3. Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliver
  4. Thought o' my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills:
  5. For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses,
  6. Lavèd my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death,
  7. He whom the Trojan soil, Rhoetean shore underlying,
  8. Buries for ever and aye, forcibly snatched from our sight.
  9. ---
  10. I can address; no more shall I hear thee tell of thy doings,
  11. Say, shall I never again, brother all liefer than life,
  12. Sight thee henceforth? But I will surely love thee for ever
  13. Ever what songs I sing saddened shall be by thy death;
  14. Such as the Daulian bird 'neath gloom of shadowy frondage
  15. Warbles, of Itys lost ever bemoaning the lot.)
  16. Yet amid grief so great to thee, my Hortalus, send I
  17. These strains sung to a mode borrowed from Battiades;
  18. Lest shouldest weet of me thy words, to wandering wind-gusts
  19. Vainly committed, perchance forth of my memory flowed—
  20. As did that apple sent for a furtive giftie by wooer,
  21. In the chaste breast of the Maid hidden a-sudden out-sprang;
  22. For did the hapless forget when in loose-girt garment it lurkèd,
  23. Forth would it leap as she rose, scared by her mother's approach,
  24. And while coursing headlong, it rolls far out of her keeping,
  25. O'er the triste virgin's brow flushes the conscious blush.