Carmina

Catullus

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

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