Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Say, shall I never again, brother all liefer than life,
- Sight thee henceforth? But I will surely love thee for ever
- Ever what songs I sing saddened shall be by thy death;
- Such as the Daulian bird 'neath gloom of shadowy frondage
- Warbles, of Itys lost ever bemoaning the lot.)
- Yet amid grief so great to thee, my Hortalus, send I
- These strains sung to a mode borrowed from Battiades;
- Lest shouldest weet of me thy words, to wandering wind-gusts
- Vainly committed, perchance forth of my memory flowed—
- As did that apple sent for a furtive giftie by wooer,
- In the chaste breast of the Maid hidden a-sudden out-sprang;
- For did the hapless forget when in loose-girt garment it lurkèd,
- Forth would it leap as she rose, scared by her mother's approach,
- And while coursing headlong, it rolls far out of her keeping,
- O'er the triste virgin's brow flushes the conscious blush.
- He who every light of the sky world's vastness inspected,
- He who mastered in mind risings and settings of stars,
- How of the fast rising sun obscured be the fiery splendours,
- How at the seasons assured vanish the planets from view,
- How Diana to lurk thief-like 'neath Latmian stone-fields,