Carmina

Catullus

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

  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.
  1. He who every light of the sky world's vastness inspected,
  2. He who mastered in mind risings and settings of stars,
  3. How of the fast rising sun obscured be the fiery splendours,
  4. How at the seasons assured vanish the planets from view,
  5. How Diana to lurk thief-like 'neath Latmian stone-fields,
  6. Summoned by sweetness of Love, comes from her aëry gyre;
  7. That same Cónon espied among lights Celestial shining
  8. Me, Berenice's Hair, which, from her glorious head,
  9. Fulgent in brightness afar, to many a host of the Godheads
  10. Stretching her soft smooth arms she vowed to devoutly bestow,
  11. What time strengthened by joy of new-made wedlock the monarch
  12. Bounds of Assyrian land hurried to plunder and pill;
  13. Bearing of nightly strife new signs and traces delicious,
  14. Won in the war he waged virginal trophies to win.
  15. Loathsome is Venus to all new-paired? Else why be the parents'
  16. Pleasure frustrated aye by the false flow of tears
  17. Poured in profusion amid illuminate genial chamber?
  18. Nay not real the 'groans; ever so help me the Gods!
  19. This truth taught me my Queen by force of manifold 'plainings
  20. After her new groom hied facing the fierceness of fight.
  21. Yet so thou mournedst not for a bed deserted of husband,
  22. As for a brother beloved wending on woefullest way?