Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Those with the gear enwombed in crates dark orgies ordained—
- Orgies that ears profane must vainly lust for o'er hearing—
- Others with palms on high smote hurried strokes on the cymbal,
- Or from the polisht brass woke thin-toned tinkling music,
- While from the many there boomed and blared hoarse blast of the horn-trump,
- And with its horrid skirl loud shrilled the barbarous bag-pipe
- Showing such varied forms, that richly-decorated couch-cloth
- Folded in strait embrace the bedding drapery-veiled.
- This when the Thessalan youths had eyed with eager inspection
- Fulfilled, place they began to provide for venerate Godheads,
- Even as Zephyrus' breath, seas couching placid at dawn-tide,
- Roughens, then stings and spurs the wavelets slantingly fretted—
- Rising Aurora the while 'neath Sol the wanderer's threshold—
- Tardy at first they flow by the clement breathing of breezes
- Urged, and echo the shores with soft-toned ripples of laughter,
- But as the winds wax high so waves wax higher and higher,
- Flashing and floating afar to outswim morn's purpurine splendours,—
- So did the crowd fare forth, the royal vestibule leaving,
- And to their house each wight with vaguing paces departed.
- After their wending, the first, foremost from Pelion's summit,