by Catullus
Of thy kisses, enough to charm, to tire me?
Multitudinous as the grains on even
Lybian sands aromatic of Cyrene;
‘Twixt Jove’s oracle in the sandy desert 5
And where royally Battus old reposeth;
Yea a company vast as in the silence
Stars which stealthily gaze on happy lovers;
E’en so many the kisses I to kiss thee
Count, wild lover, enough to charm, to tire me; 10
These no curious eye can wholly number,
Tongue of jealousy ne’er bewitch nor harm them.
VIII.
Ah poor Catullus, learn to play the fool no more.
Lost is the lost, thou know’st it, and the past is past.
Bright once the days and sunny shone the light on thee,
Still ever hasting where she led, the maid so fair,
By me belov’d as maiden is belov’d no more. 5
Was then enacting all the merry mirth wherein
Thyself delighted, and the maid she said not nay.
Ah truly bright and sunny shone the days on thee.
Now she resigns thee; child, do thou resign no less,
Nor follow her that flies thee, or to bide in woe 10
Consent, but harden all thy heart, resolve, endure.
Farewell, my love. Catullus is resolv’d, endures,
He will not ask for pity, will not importune.
But thou’lt be mourning thus to pine unask’d alway.
O past retrieval faithless! Ah what hours are thine! 15
When comes a likely wooer? who protests thou’rt fair?
Who brooks to love thee? who decrees to live thine own?
Whose kiss delights thee? whose the lips that own thy bite?
Yet, yet, Catullus, learn to bear, resolve, endure.
IX.
Dear Veranius, you of all my comrades
Worth, you only, a many goodly thousands,
Speak they truly that you your hearth revisit,
Brothers duteous, homely mother aged?
Yes, believe them. O happy news, Catullus! 5
I shall see him alive, alive shall hear him,
Tribes Iberian, uses, haunts, declaring
As his wont is; on him my neck reclining
Kiss his flowery face, his eyes delightful.
Now, all men that have any mirth about you, 10
Know ye happier any, any blither?
X.
In the Forum as I was idly roaming
Varus took me a merry dame to visit.
She a lady, methought upon the moment,
Of some quality, not without refinement.
1.
So, arrived, in a trice we fell on endless 5
Themes colloquial; how the fact, the falsehood
With Bithynia, what the case about it,
Had it helped me to profit or to money.
Then I told her a very truth; no atom
There for company, praetor, hungry natives, 10
Home might render a body aught the fatter:
Then our praetor a castaway, could hugely
Mulct his company, had a taste to jeer them.
2.
Spoke another, ‘Yet anyways, to bear you
Men were ready, enough to grace a litter. 15
They grow quantities, if report belies not.’
Then supremely myself to flaunt before her,
I ‘So thoroughly could not angry fortune
Spite, I might not, afflicted in my province,
Get erected a lusty eight to bear me. 20
But so scrubby the poor sedan, the batter’d
Frame-work, nobody there nor here could ever
Lift it, painfully neck to nick adjusting.’
3.
Quoth the lady, belike a lady wanton,
‘Just for courtesy, lend me, dear Catullus, 25
Those same nobodies. I the great Sarapis
Go to visit awhile.’ Said I in answer,
‘Thanks; but, lady, for all my easy boasting,
’Twas too summary; there’s a friend who knows me,
Cinna Gaius, his the sturdy bearers. 30
‘Mine or Cinna’s, an inch alone divides us,
I use Cinna’s, as e’en my own possession.
But you’re really a bore, a very tiresome
Dame unmannerly, thus to take me napping.’
XI.
Furius and Aurelius, O my comrades,
Whether your Catullus attain to farthest
Ind, the long shore lash’d by reverberating
Surges Eoan;
Hyrcan or luxurious horde Arabian, 5
Sacan or grim Parthian arrow-bearer,
Fields the rich Nile discolorates, a seven-fold
River abounding;
Whether o’er high Alps he afoot ascending
Track the long records of a mighty Cæsar, 10
Rhene, the Gauls’ deep river, a lonely Britain
Dismal in ocean;
This, or aught else haply the gods determine,
Absolute, you, with me in all to part not;
Bid my love greet, bear her a little errand, 15
Scarcely of honour.
Say ‘Live on yet, still given o’er to nameless
Lords, within one bosom, a many wooers,
Clasp’d, as unlov’d each, so in hourly change all
Lewdly disabled. 20
‘Think not henceforth, thou, to recal Catullus’
Love; thy own sin slew it, as on the meadow’s
Verge declines, ungently beneath the plough-share
Stricken, a flower.’
XII.
Marrucinian Asinius, hardly civil
Left-hand practices o’er the merry wine-cup.
Watch occasion, anon remove the napkin.
Call this drollery? Trust me, friend, it is not.
’Tis most beastly, a trick among a thousand. 5
Not believe me? believe a friendly brother,
Laughing Pollio; he declares a talent
Poor indemnification, he the parlous
Child of voluble humour and facetious.
So face hendecasyllables, a thousand, 10
Or most speedily send me back the napkin;
Gift not prized at a sorry valuation,
But for company; ’twas a friend’s memento.
Cloth of Saetabis, exquisite, from utmost
Iber, sent as a gift to me Fabullus 15
And Veranius. Ought not I to love them
As Veranius even, as Fabullus?
XIII.
Please kind heaven, in happy time, Fabullus,
We’ll dine merrily, dear my friend, together.
Promise only to bring, your own, a dinner
Rich and goodly; withal a lily maiden,
Wine, and banter, a world of hearty laughing. 5
Promise only; betimes we dine, my gentle
Friend, most merrily; but, for your Catullus —
Know he boasts but a pouch of empty cobwebs.
Yet take contrary fee, the quintessential
Love, or sweeter if aught is, aught supremer, 10
Perfume savoury, mine; my love received it
Gift of every Venus, all the Cupids.
Would you smell it? a god shall hear Fabullus
Pray unbody him only nose for ever.
XIV.
Calvus, save that as eyes thou art beloved,
I could verily loathe thee for the morning’s
Gift, Vatinius hardly more devoutly.
Slain with poetry! done to death with abjects!
O what syllable earn’d it, act allow’d it? 5
Gods, your malison on the sorry client
Sent that rascally rabble of malignants.
Yet, if, freely to guess, the gift recherché
Some grammarian, haply Sulla, sent thee;
I repine not; a dear delight, a triumph 10
This, thy drudg
ery thus to see rewarded.
Gods! an horrible and a deadly volume!
Sent so faithfully, friend, to thy Catullus,
Just to kill him upon a day, the festive,
Saturnalia, best of all the season. 15
Sure, a drollery not without requital.
For, come dawn, to the cases and the bookshops
I; there gather a Caesius and Aquinus,
With Suffenus, in every wretch a poison:
Such plague-prodigy thy remuneration! 20
Now good-morrow! away with evil omen
Whence ill destiny lamely bore ye, clumsy
Poet-rabble, an age’s execration!
XIVB.
Readers, any that in the future ever
Scan my fantasies, haply lay upon me
Hands adventurous of solicitation —
XV.
Lend thy bounty to me, to my beloved,
Kind Aurelius. I do ask a favour
Fair and lawful; if you did e’er in earnest
Seek some virginal innocence to cherish,
Touch not lewdly the mistress of my passion. 5
Trust the people; avails not aught to fear them,
Such, who hourly within the streets repassing,
Run, good souls, on a busy quest or idle.
You, you only the free, the felon-hearted,
Fright me, prodigal you of every virtue. 10
Well, let luxury run her heady riot,
Love flow over; enough abroad to sate thee:
This one trespass — a tiny boon — presume not.
But should impious heat or humour headstrong
Drive thee wilfully, wretch, to such profaning, 15
In one folly to dare a double outrage:
Ah what misery thine; what angry fortune!
Heels drawn tight to the stretch shall open inward
Lodgment easy to mullet and to radish.
XVI.
I’ll traduce you, accuse you, and abuse you,
Soft Aurelius, e’en as easy Furius.
You that lightly a saucy verse resenting,
Misconceit me, sophisticate me wanton.
Know, pure chastity rules the godly poet, 5
Rules not poesy, needs not e’er to rule it;
Charms some verse with a witty grace delightful?
’Tis voluptuous, impudent, a wanton.
It shall kindle an icy thought to courage,
Not boy-fancies alone, but every frozen 10
Flank immovable, all amort to pleasure.
You my kisses, a million happy kisses,
Musing, read me a silky thrall to softness?
I’ll traduce you, accuse you, and abuse you.
XVII.
1.
Kind Colonia, fain upon bridge more lengthy to gambol,
And quite ready to dance amain, fearing only the rotten
Legs too crazily steadied on planks of old resurrections,
Lest it plunge to the deep morass, there supinely to welter;
So surprise thee a sumptuous bridge thy fancy to pleasure, 5
Passive under a Salian god’s most lusty procession;
This rare favour, a laugh for all time, Colonia, grant me.
In my township a citizen lives: Catullus adjures thee
Headlong into the mire below topsy-turvy to drown him.
Only, where the superfluent lake, the spongy putrescence, 10
Sinks most murkily flushed, descends most profoundly the bottom.
Such a ninny, a fool is he; witless even as any
Two years’ urchin, across papa’s elbow drowsily swaying.
2.
For though wed to a maiden in spring-tide youthfully budding,
Maiden crisp as a petulant kid, as airily wanton, 15
Sweets more privy to guard than e’er grape-bunch shadowy-purpling;
He, he leaves her alone to romp idly, cares not a fouter.
Nor leans to her at all, the man’s part; but helpless as alder
Lies, new-fell’d in a ditch, beneath axe Ligurian ham-strung,
As alive to the world, as if world nor wife were at issue. 20
Such this gaby, my own, my arch fool; he sees not, he hears not
Who himself is, or if the self is, or is not, he knows not.
Him I’d gladly be lowering down thy bridge to the bottom,
If from stupor inanimate peradventure he wake him,
Leaving muddy behind him his sluggish heart’s hesitation, 25
As some mule in a glutinous sludge her rondel of iron.
XXI.
Sire and prince-patriarch of hungry starvelings,
Lean Aurelius, all that are, that have been,
That shall ever in after years be famish’d;
Wouldst thou lewdly my dainty love to folly
Tempt, and visibly? thou be near, be joking 5
Cling and fondle, a hundred arts redouble?
O presume not: a wily wit defeated
Pays in scandalous incapacitation.
Yet didst folly to fulness add, ‘twere all one;
Now shall beauty to thirst be train’d or hunger’s 10
Grim necessity; this is all my sorrow.
Then hold, wanton, upon the verge; to-morrow
Comes preposterous incapacitation.
XXII.
Suffenus, he, dear Varus, whom, methinks, you know,
Has sense, a ready tongue to talk, a wit urbane,
And writes a world of verses, on my life no less.
Ten times a thousand he, believe me, ten or more,
Keeps fairly written; not on any palimpsest, 5
As often, enter’d, paper extra-fine, sheets new,
New every roller, red the strings, the parchment-case
Lead-rul’d, with even pumice all alike complete.
You read them: our choice spirit, our refin’d rare wit,
Suffenus, O no ditcher e’er appeared more rude, 10
No looby coarser; such a shock, a change is there.
How then resolve this puzzle? He the birthday-wit,
For so we thought him — keener yet, if aught is so —
Becomes a dunce more boorish e’en than hedge-born boor,
If e’er he faults on verses; yet in heart is then 15
Most happy, writing verses, happy past compare,
So sweet his own self, such a world at home finds he.
Friend, ’tis the common error; all alike are wrong,
Not one, but in some trifle you shall eye him true
Suffenus; each man bears from heaven the fault they send, 20
None sees within the wallet hung behind, our own.
XXIII.
Needy Furius, house nor hoard possessing,
Bug or spider, or any fire to thaw you,
Yet most blest in a father and a step-dame,
Each for penury fit to tooth a flint-stone:
Is not happiness yours? a home united? 5
Son, sire, mother, a lathy dame to match him.
Who can wonder? in all is health, digestion,
Pure and vigorous, hours without a trouble.
Fires ye fear not, or house’s heavy downfal,
Deeds unnatural, art in act to poison, 10
Dangers myriad accidents befalling.
Then your bodies? in every limb a shrivell’d
Horn, all dryness in all the world whatever,
Tann’d or frozen or icy-lean with ages.
Sure superlative happiness surrounds thee. 15
Thee sweat frets not, an o’er-saliva frets not,
Frets not snivel or oozy rheumy nostril.
Yet such purity lacks not e’en a purer.
White those haunches as any cleanly-silver’d
Salt, it takes you a month to barely dirt them. 20
Then like beans, or inert as e’er a pebble,
Those impeccable heavy loins, a finger’s
Breadth from apathy ne’er seduced to riot.
; Such prosperity, such superb profusion,
Slight not, Furius, idly nor reject not. 25
As for sesterces, all the would-be fortune,
Cease to wish it; enough, methinks, the present.
XXIV.
O thou blossom of all the race Juventian
Not now only, but all as yet arisen,
All to flower in after-years arising;
Midas’ treasury better you presented
Him that owns not a slave nor any coffer, 5
Ere you suffer his alien arm’s presuming.
What? you fancy him all refin’d perfection?
Perfect! truly, without a slave, a coffer.
Slight, reject it, away with it; for all that
He, he owns not a slave nor any coffer. 10
XXV.
Smooth Thallus, inly softer you than any furry rabbit,
Or glossy goose’s oily plumes, or velvet earlap yielding,
Or feeble age’s heavy thighs, or flimsy filthy cobweb;
And Thallus, hungry rascal you, as hurricane rapacious,
When winks occasion on the stroke, the gulls agape declaring: 5
Return the mantle home to me, you watch’d your hour to pilfer,
The fleecy napkin and the rings from Thynia quaintly graven,
Whatever you parade as yours, vain fool, a sham reversion:
Unglue the nails adroit to steal, unclench the spoil, deliver,
Lest yet that haunch voluptuous, those tender hands caressant, 10
Should take an ugly print severe, the scourge’s heavy branding;
And strange to bruises you should heave, as heaves in open Ocean,
Some little hoy surprised adrift, when wails the windy water.
XXVI.
Draughts, dear Furius, if my villa faces,
’Tis not showery south, nor airy wester,
North’s grim fury, nor east; ’tis only fifteen
Thousand sesterces, add two hundred over.
Draft unspeakable, icy, pestilential! 5
XXVII.
Boy, young caterer of Falernian olden,
Brim me cups of a fiercer harsher essence;
So Postumia, queen of healths presiding,
Bids, less thirsty the thirsty grape, the toper.
But dull water, avaunt. Away the wine-cup’s 5
Sullen enemy; seek the sour, the solemn!
Here Thyonius hails his own elixir.
