Carmina

Catullus

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.

  1. Albeit care that consumes, with dule assiduous grieving,
  2. Me from the Learnèd Maids (Hortalus!) ever seclude,
  3. Nor can avail sweet births of the Muses thou to deliver
  4. Thought o' my mind; (so much floats it on flooding of ills:
  5. For that the Lethe-wave upsurging of late from abysses,
  6. Lavèd my brother's foot, paling with pallor of death,
  7. He whom the Trojan soil, Rhoetean shore underlying,
  8. Buries for ever and aye, forcibly snatched from our sight.
  9. ---
  10. I can address; no more shall I hear thee tell of thy doings,
  11. Say, shall I never again, brother all liefer than life,
  12. Sight thee henceforth? But I will surely love thee for ever
  13. Ever what songs I sing saddened shall be by thy death;
  14. Such as the Daulian bird 'neath gloom of shadowy frondage
  15. Warbles, of Itys lost ever bemoaning the lot.)
  16. Yet amid grief so great to thee, my Hortalus, send I
  17. These strains sung to a mode borrowed from Battiades;
  18. Lest shouldest weet of me thy words, to wandering wind-gusts
  19. Vainly committed, perchance forth of my memory flowed—
  20. As did that apple sent for a furtive giftie by wooer,