Carmina
Catullus
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.
- Penalty due shall befall whoso makes oath to no purpose.
- Yet who assumes the vaunt forceful as iron to be?
- E'en was that mount o'erthrown, though greatest in universe, where through
- Thía's illustrious race speeded its voyage to end,
- Whenas the Medes brought forth new sea, and barbarous youth-hood
- Urged an Armada to swim traversing middle-Athos.
- What can be done by Hair when such things yield them to Iron?
- Jupiter! Grant Chalybon perish the whole of the race,
- Eke who in primal times ore seeking under the surface
- Showed th' example, and spalled iron however so hard.
- Shortly before I was shorn my sister tresses bewailèd
- Lot of me, e'en as the sole brother to Memnon the Black,
- Winnowing upper air wi' feathers flashing and quiv'ring,
- Chloris' wing-borne steed, came before Arsinoë,
- Whence upraising myself he flies through aëry shadows,
- And in chaste Venus' breast drops he the present he bears.
- Eke Zephyritis had sent, for the purpose trusted, her bondsman,
- Settler of Grecian strain on the Canopian strand.
- So willed various Gods, lest sole 'mid lights of the Heavens
- Should Ariadne's crown taken from temples of her