Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Lavished; nor such hopes to me the hapless were bidden;
- But the glad married joys, the longed-for pleasures of wedlock.
- All now empty and vain, by breath of the breezes bescattered!
- Now, let woman no more trust her to man when he sweareth,
- Ne'er let her hope to find or truth or faith in his pleadings,
- Who when lustful thought forelooks to somewhat attaining,
- Never an oath they fear, shall spare no promise to promise.
- Yet no sooner they sate all lewdness and lecherous fancy,
- Nothing remember of words and reck they naught of fore-swearing.
- Certes, you did I snatch from midmost whirlpool of ruin
- Deadly, and held it cheap loss of a brother to suffer
- Rather than fail your need (O false!) at hour the supremest.
- Therefore my limbs are doomed to be torn of birds, and of ferals
- Prey, nor shall upheapt Earth afford a grave to my body.
- Say me, what lioness bare you 'neath lone rock of the desert?
- What sea spued you conceived from out the spume of his surges!
- What manner Syrt, what ravening Scylla, what vasty Charybdis?
- you who for sweet life saved such meeds are lief of returning!
- If never willed your breast with me to mate you in marriage,
- Hating the savage law decreed by primitive parent,