Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- But whenas union meet she wins her at ripest of seasons,
- More to her spouse she is dear and less she's irk to her parents.
- Hymen O Hymenaeus, Hymen here, O Hymenaeus!
- But do thou cease to resist (O Maid!) such bridegroom opposing,
- Right it is not to resist whereto consigned thee a father,
- Father and mother of thee unto whom obedience is owing.
- Not is that maidenhood all thine own, but partly thy parents!
- Owneth thy sire one third, one third is right of thy mother,
- Only the third is thine: stint thee to strive with the others,
- Who to the stranger son have yielded their dues with a dower!
- Hymen O Hymenaeus: Hymen here, O Hymenaeus!
- O'er high deep seas in speedy ship his voyage Atys sped
- Until he trod the Phrygian grove with hurried eager tread
- And as the gloomy tree-shorn stead, the she-god's home, he sought
- There sorely stung with fiery ire and madman's vaguing thought,
- Share he with sharpened flint the freight wherewith his form was fraught.
- Then as the she-he sensed limbs were void of manly strain
- And sighted freshly shed a-ground spot of ensanguined stain,
- Snatched she the timbrel's legier load with hands as snowdrops white,
- Thy timbrel, Mother Cybele, the firstings of thy rite,