Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Then did the brother drench his hands in brotherly bloodshed,
- Stinted the son in heart to mourn decease of his parents,
- Longèd the sire to sight his first-born's funeral convoy
- So more freely the flower of step-dame-maiden to rifle;
- After that impious Queen her guiltless son underlying,
- Impious, the household gods with crime ne'er dreading to sully—
- All things fair and nefand being mixt in fury of evil
- Turned from ourselves avert the great goodwill of the Godheads.
- Wherefor they nowise deign our human assemblies to visit,
- Nor do they suffer themselves be met in light of the day-tide.
- Albeit care that consumes, with dule assiduous grieving,
- Me from the Learnèd Maids (Hortalus!) ever seclude,
- Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliver
- Thought o' my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills:
- For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses,
- Lavèd my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death,
- He whom the Trojan soil, Rhoetean shore underlying,
- Buries for ever and aye, forcibly snatched from our sight.
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- I can address; no more shall I hear thee tell of thy doings,