Carmina

Catullus

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

  1. Where Salisúbulus' rites with solemn function are sacred,
  2. As thou (Colony!) grant me boon of mightiest laughter.
  3. Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangway
  4. Hurlèd head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire,
  5. Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking,
  6. Deepest and lividest lie, the swallow of hollow voracious.
  7. Witless surely the wight whose sense is less than of boy-babe
  8. Two-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father.
  9. He though, wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide,
  10. (Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet,
  11. Worthier diligent watch than grape-bunch blackest and ripest)
  12. Suffers her sport as she please nor rates her even at hair's worth,
  13. Nowise 'stirring himself, but lying log-like as alder
  14. Felled and o'er floating the fosse of safe Ligurian woodsman,
  15. Feeling withal, as though such spouse he never had own'd;
  16. So this marvel o' mine sees naught, and nothing can hear he,
  17. What he himself, an he be or not be, wholly unknowing.
  18. Now would I willingly pitch such wight head first fro' thy bridge,
  19. Better a-sudden t'arouse that numskull's stolid old senses,