Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. For pious poet it behoves be chaste
  2. Himself; no chastity his verses need;
  3. Nay, gain they finally more salt of wit
  4. When over softy and of scanty shame,
  5. Apt for exciting somewhat prurient,
  6. In boys, I say not, but in bearded men
  7. Who fail of movements in their hardened loins.
  8. Ye who so many thousand kisses sung
  9. Have read, deny male masculant I be?
  10. You twain I'll . . . and . . .
  1. Colony! fain to display thy games on length of thy town-bridge!
  2. There, too, ready to dance, though fearing the shaking of crazy
  3. Logs of the Bridgelet propt on pier-piles newly renewèd,
  4. Lest supine all sink deep-merged in the marish's hollow,
  5. So may the bridge hold good when builded after thy pleasure
  6. Where Salisúbulus' rites with solemn function are sacred,
  7. As thou (Colony!) grant me boon of mightiest laughter.
  8. Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangway
  9. Hurlèd head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire,
  10. Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking,