Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Chose before every and each the lively wooing of Theseus?
- Or how borne by the ship to the yeasting shore-line of Dia
- Came she? or how when bound her eyes in bondage of slumber
- Left her that chosen mate with mind unmindful departing?
- Often (they tell) with heart inflamed by fiery fury
- Poured she shrilling of shrieks from deepest depths of her bosom;
- Now she would sadly scale the broken faces of mountains,
- Whence she might overglance the boundless boiling of billows,
- Then she would rush to bestem the salt-plain's quivering wavelet
- And from her ankles bare the dainty garment uplifting,
- Spoke she these words ('tis said) from sorrow's deepest abysses,
- While from her tear-drencht face outburst cold shivering sobs.
- "Thus from my patrial shore, O traitor, hurried to exile,
- Me on a lonely strand hast left, perfidious Theseus?
- Thus wise farest, despite the godhead of Deities spurned,
- (Reckless, alas!) to your home convoying perjury-curses?
- Naught, then, ever availed that mind of cruelest counsel
- Alter? No saving grace in you was evermore ready,
- That to have pity on me vouchsafed your pitiless bosom?
- Nevertheless not in past time such were the promises wordy