Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Aid of my sire can I crave? Whom I willing abandoned,
- Treading in tracks of a youth bewrayed with blood of a brother!
- Can I console my soul with the helpful love of a helpmate
- Who flies me with pliant oars, flies overbounding the sea-depths?
- Nay, if this Coast I quit, this lone isle lends me no roof-tree,
- Nor aught issue allows begirt by billows of Ocean:
- Nowhere is path for flight: none hope shows: all things are silent:
- All be a desolate waste: all makes display of destruction.
- Yet never close these eyes in latest languor of dying,
- Ne'er from my wearied frame go forth slow-ebbing my senses,
- Ere from the Gods just doom implore I, treason-betrayed,
- And with my breath supreme firm faith of Celestials invoke I.
- Therefore, O you who 'venge man's deed with penalties direful,
- Eumenides! aye wont to bind with viperous hairlocks
- Foreheads,—Oh, deign outspeak fierce wrath from bosom outbreathing,
- Hither, Oh hither, speed, and lend you all ear to my grievance,
- Which now sad I (alas!) outpour from innermost vitals
- Maugre my will, sans help, blind, fired with furious madness.
- And, as indeed all spring from veriest core of my bosom,
- Suffer you not the cause of grief and woe to evanish;