Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Seeing his narrow walls in such wise vexed with evils,
- Theseus of freest will for dear-loved Athens his body
- Offered a victim so that no more to Crete be deported
- Lives by Cecropia doomed to burials burying nowise;
- Then with a swifty ship and soft breathed breezes a-stirring,
- Sought he Minos the Haughty where homed in proudest of Mansions.
- Him as with yearning glance forthright espied the royal
- Maiden, whom pure chaste couch aspiring delicate odours
- Cherisht, in soft embrace of a mother comforted all-whiles,
- (E'en as the myrtles begot by the flowing floods of Eurotas,
- Or as the tincts distinct brought forth by breath of the springtide)
- Never the burning lights of her eyes from gazing upon him
- Turned she, before fierce flame in all her body conceived she
- Down in its deepest depths and burning within her marrow.
- Ah, with unmitigate heart exciting wretchedmost furies,
- You, Boy sacrosanct! man's grief and gladness commingling,
- You too of Golgos Queen and Lady of leafy Idalium,
- Whelm'd you in what manner waves that maiden fantasy-fired,
- All for a blond-haired youth suspiring many a singulf!
- Whiles how dire was the dread she dreed in languishing heart-strings;