Carmina

Catullus

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

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