I doubt whether
any real advantage would thus be gained.
any real advantage would thus be gained.
Catullus - Ellis - Poems and Fragments
org/access_use#pd
? x PREFACE.
of this epistle, but not of this disaster, still less of this
direction. The other element of quantity is less
rigidly defined; for (i) syllables strictly long, as /,
thy, so, are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made
long by the accent falling upon them are in some
cases shortened, as rulne, perished, cruel ; (3) syllables
which the absence of the accent only allows to be long
in thesi, are, in virtue of the classical laws of position,
permitted to rank as long elsewhere moment of his,
of this epistle. It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed. Pentameters like
Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite ;
sapphics like
Are then humane mindes privileged so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils ?
hexameters like
fire no liquor can cool : NeptiinJs realm would not avail us.
Nurs inward maladies, which have not scope to bee breath 1 d out.
Oh no no, worthie shepherd, worth can never enter a title ;
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please
either an average reader or a classically trained
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? PREFACE. xi
student. The same may be said of the translation
into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of
Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse
of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr.
Arber). Here is his version of Eel. I. , i TO.
MELIBAEUS.
Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie c haunting :
We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remoued,
And fro our pastures swecte : thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
Makst thicke groues to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.
O Melibaeus, he was no man, but a God who releeude me :
Euer he shalbe my God : from this same Sheepcot his alters
Neuer, a tender lambe shall want, with blood to bedew them.
This good gift did he giue, to my steeres thus freelie to wander,
And to my selfe (thou. seest) on pipe to resound what I listed.
ib. 50 56.
Here no unwoonted foode shall grieue young theaues who be laded,
Nor the infections foule of neighbours flocke shall annoie them.
Happie olde man. In shaddowy bankes and coole prettie places,
Heere by the quainted floodes and springs most holie remaining.
Here, these quicksets fresh which lands seuer out fro thy neighbors
And greene willow rowes which Hiblae bees doo rejoice in,
Off fine whistring noise, shall bring sweete sleepe to thy sences.
The following stanzas are from a Sapphic ode into
which Webbe translated, or as we should say, trans-
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? xii PREFACE.
posed the fourth Eclogue of Spenser's Sheepheardes
Calendar.
Say, behold did ye euer her Angelikeface,
Like to Phoebe fayre ? or her heauenly hauour
And the princelike grace that in her remaineth ?
haueyee the like seene ?
Vnto that place Caliope dooth high her,
Where my Goddesse shines : to the same the Muser
After her -with sweete Violines about them
cheerefully tracing.
All ye Sheepheardes maides that about the greene dwell,
Speede ye there to her grace, but among ye take he;de
All be Virgins pure that aproche to deck her,
dutie requireth.
When ye shall present ye before her in place,
See ye not your selues doo demeane too rudely :
Bynd the fillets ; and to be fate the waste gyrt
fast with a tawdryne.
Bring the Pinckes therewith many Gellifloivres sweete,
And the Cullambynes : let vs haue the Wynesops,
With the Coronation that among the loue laddes
wontes to be worne much.
Daffadowndillies all a long the ground strowe,
And the Cowslyppe with a prety paunce let heere lye.
Kyngcuppe and Lillies so beloude of all men
and the deluceflowre.
There are many faults in these verses ; over quaint-
nesses of language, constructions impossible in English,
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? PREFACE. xiii
quantities of doubtful correctness, harsh elisions, for
Webbe has tried even elisions. Yet, if I may trust
my judgment, all of them can still be read with plea-
sure ; the sapphics may almost be called a success.
This is even more true of metres, where these faults
are less perceptible or more easily avoided, for in-
stance, Asclepiads. Take the verses on solitariness,
Arcadia, B. II. fin.
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness !
O how much I do like your solitariness !
Where man's mind hath a freed consideration
Of goodness to receive lovely direction.
or the hen decasyllabics immediately preceding,
Reason tell me thy minde, if here be reason,
In this strange violence, to make resistance,
Where sweet graces erect the stately banner.
It is obvious that a very little more trouble would
have converted these into very perfect and very
pleasing poems. Had Sir Philip Sidney written every
asclepiad on the model of Where man's mind hath a
freed consideration, every hendecasyllable like Where
sweet graces erect the stately banner, the adjustment of
accent and quantity thus attained might, I think, have
induced greater poets than he to make the experiment
on a larger scale. But neither he nor his contem-
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? xiv PREFACE.
poraries were permitted to grasp as a principle a
regularity which they sometimes secured by chance ;
nor, so far as I am aware, have the various revivals of
ancient metre in this country or Germany in any case
consistently carried out the whole theory, without
which the reproduction is partial, and cannot look
for a more than partial success. Even the four
specimens given in the posthumous edition of dough's
poems, two of them elegiac, one alcaic, one in
hexameters, though professedly constructed on a
quantitative basis, and, in one instance (Trunks the
forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing, <&c. ) com-
bining legitimate quantity (in which accent and
position are alike observed) with illegitimate (in
which position is observed, but accent disregarded)
into a not unpleasing rhythm, cannot be considered as
more than imperfect realizations of the true positional
principle. Tennyson's three specimens are, at least
in English, still unique. It is to be hoped that he
will not suffer them to remain so. Systems of Gly-
conics and Asclepiads are, if I mistake not, easily
manageable, and are only thought foreign to the
genius of our language because they have never been
written on strict principles of art by a really great
master.
What, then, are the rules on which such rhythms
become possible? They are, briefly, these: (i) ac-
cented syllables, as a general rule, are long, though
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? PREFACE. xv
some syllables which count as long need not be
accented, as in
All that on earth' 's leas blooms, what blossoms Thessaly nursing,
blossoms, though only accented on the first syllable,
counts for a spondee, the shortness of the second o
being partly helped out by the two consonants which
follow it; partly by the fact that the syllable is in
thesi ; (2) the laws of position are to be observed,
according to the general rules of classical prosody :
(a) dactyls terminating in a consonant like beautiful,
bounteous, or ending in a double vowel or a diphthong
like all of you, surely may, come to thee, must be
followed by a word beginning with a vowel or y or h ;
dactyls terminating in a vowel or y, like slippery,
should be followed, except in rare cases, by words
beginning with a consonant; trochees, whether com-
posed of one word or more, should, if ending in a
consonant, be followed by a vowel, if ending in
the vowel a, by a consonant, thus, planted around
not pla? tted beneath, Aurora the sun's not Aurora
a sun's (see however, Ixiv. 253), but unto a wood, any
again, sorry at all, you be amused, (b) Syllables made
up of a vowel followed by two or more consonants,
each of which is distinctly heard in pronunciation, as
long, sins, part, band, waits, souls, ears, must, heart,
bright, strength, end, and, rapt, hers, dealt, moment,
bosoms, answers, mountains, bearest, tumbling, giving,
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? xvi PREFACE.
coming, harbour/;;^, dimcu/t, imminenf, stratagems,
utterance, happiest, tremblingly, can never rank as
short, even if unaccented and followed by a vowel,
h or y. Thus, to go back to Longfellow's line,
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
forest, murmuring, pines and the, are all inadmissible.
But where a vowel is followed by two consonants, one
of which is unheard or only heard slightly, as in accuse,
sh#//, awemble, dissemble, kindm, compass, affect,
appear, annoy, or when the second or third con-
sonant is a liquid, as in betray, beslime, besmear, depress,
dethrone, agree, the vowel preceding is so much more
short than long as to be regularly admissible as short,
rarely admissible as long. On this principle I have
allowed disorderly, tendntlSss, heavenly, to rank as
dactyls.
These rules are after all only an outline, and per-
haps can never be made more. It will be observed
that they are more negative than positive. The reason
of this is not far to seek. The main difference between
my verses and those of other contemporary writers
the one point on which I claim for myself the merit
of novelty is the strict observance throughout of the
rules of position. But the strict observance of posi-
tion is in effect the strict avoidance of unclassical
collocations of syllables : it is almost wholly negative.
To illustrate my meaning I will instance the poems
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? PREFACE. xvii
written in pure iambics, the Phaselus ille and Quis hoc
potest uidere. Heyse translates the first line of the
former of these poems by
Die Gahotte, die ihr schauet, Hebe Herrn,
and this would be a fair representation of a pure
iambic line, according to the views of most German
and most English writers. Yet not only is Die no short
syllable, but ihr, itself long, is made more hopelessly
long by preceding three consonants in schauet, just as
the last syllable of schauet, although in itself short,
loses its right to stand for a true short in being
followed by the first consonant of liebe. My own
translation,
The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
whatever its defects, is at least a pretty exact repre-
sentation of a pure iambic line. xxix. 6-8, are thus
translated by Heyse :
Und jener soil in Uebermuthes Ueberfltiss
Von einem Bett zum andern in die Runde gehn ?
by me thus,
Shall he in 6'er-assumption, 6 'er --repletion he,
Sedately saunter every dainty couch along?
The difference is purely negative ; I have bound
myself to avoid certain positions forbidden by the
laws of ancient prosody. To some I may seem to
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? xviii PREFACE.
have lost in vigour by the process ; yet I believe the
sense of triumph over the difficulties of our language,
the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and per-
ceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which,
as much as anything, contributes to the per-
manent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification,
will more than compensate for any shortcomings
which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable.
The same may be said of the elaborately artificial
poem to Camerius (c. lv. ), and the almost unapproach-
able Attis (c. Ixiii. ). Here, at least half the interest
lies in the varied turns of the metre ; if these can be
represented with anything like faithfulness, the gain
in exactness of prosody is enough, in my judgment,
to counterbalance the possible loss of freedom in
expression.
There is another circumstance which tends to
make modern rules of prosody necessarily negative.
Quantity, in English revivals of ancient metre, depends
not only on position, but on accent. But accent
varies greatly in different words ; heavy level ever
cometh any, have the same accent as empty evil either
boometh penny ; but the first syllable in the former
set of words is lighter than in the latter. Hence,
though accented, they may, on occasion, be con-
sidered and used as short ; as, on the same principle,
dolorotis stratagem echoeth family, usually dactyls,
may, on occasion, become tribrachs. But how lay
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? PREFACE. xix
\
down any positive rule in a matter necessarily so fluc-
tuating? We cannot. All we can do is to refuse
admission as short syllables to any heavier accented
syllable. Here, then, much must be left to individual
discretion. My translation of the Attis will best
show my own feeling in the matter. But I am fully
aware that in this respect I have fallen far short of
consistency. I have made any sometimes short,
more often long ; to, usually short, is lengthened in
Ixi. 26, Ixvii. 19, Ixviii. 143; with is similarly long,
though not followed by a consonant, in Ixi. 36 ; given
is long in xxviii. 7, short in xi. 17, Ixiv. 213; are is
short in Ixvii. 14 ; and more generally many syllables
allowed to pass for short in the Attis are elsewhere
long. Nor have I scrupled to forsake the ancient
quantity in proper names ; following Heyse, I have
made the first syllable of Verona short in xxxv. 3,
Ixvii. 34, although it retains its proper quantity in
Ixviii. 27. Again, Pheneos is a dactyl in Ixviii. in,
while Satrachus is an anapaest in xcv. 5. In many
of these instances I have acted consciously ; if the
writers of Greece and Rome allowed many syllables
to be doubtful, and almost as a principle avoid per-
fect uniformity in the quantity of proper names, a
greater freedom may not unfairly be claimed by their
modern imitators. If Catullus could write Pharsaliam
coeunt, Pharsdlia regna frequentant, similar license
may surely be extended to me. I believe, indeed,
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? xx PREFACE.
that nothing in my translation is as violent as the
double quantity just mentioned in Catullus ; but if
there is, I would remind my readers of Goethe's
answer to the boy who told him he had been guilty of
a hexameter with seven feet, and applying the re-
mark to any seeming irregularities in my own transla-
tion would say, Lass die Bestie stehen.
It would not be difficult to swell this Preface by
enlarging on the novelty of the attempt, and indirectly
panegyrising my own undertaking.
I doubt whether
any real advantage would thus be gained. If I have
merely produced an elaborate failure, however much
I might expatiate on the principles which guided me,
my work would be an elaborate failure still. I shall
therefore say no more, and shall be contented if I
please the, even in this classically trained country, too
limited number of readers who can really hear with
their ears if, to use the borrowed language of a great
poet, I succeed in making myself vocal to the intelli-
gent alone.
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? CATULLUS.
I.
WHO shall take thee, the new, the dainty volume,
Purfled glossily, fresh with ashy pumice ?
You, Cornelius ; you of old did hold them
Something worthy, the petty witty nothings,
While you venture, alone of all Italians, 5
Time's vast chronicle in three books to circle,
Jove ! how arduous, how divinely learned!
Therefore welcome it, yours the little outcast,
This slight volume. O yet, supreme awarder,
Virgin, save it in ages on for ever. 10
II.
SPARROW, favourite of my own beloved,
Whom to play with, or in her arms to fondle,
She delighteth, anon with hardy-pointed
Finger angrily doth provoke to bite her :
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? CATULLUS.
When my lady, a lovely star to long for, 5
Bends her splendour awhile to tricksy frolic ;
Peradventure a careful heart beguiling,
Pardie, heavier ache perhaps to lighten ;
Might I, like her, in happy play caressing
Thee, my dolorous heart awhile deliver ! 10
I would joy, as of old the maid rejoiced
Racing fleetly, the golden apple eyeing,
Late-won loosener of the wary girdle.
III.
WEEP each heavenly Venus, all the Cupids,
Weep all men that have any grace about ye.
Dead the sparrow, in whom my love delighted,
The dear sparrow, in whom my love delighted.
Yea, most precious, above her eyes, she held him, 5
Sweet, all honey : a bird that ever hail'd her
Lady mistress, as hails the maid a mother.
Nor would move from her arms away: but only
Hopping round her, about her, hence or hither,
Piped his colloquy, piped to none beside her. 10
Now he wendeth along the mirky pathway,
Whence, they tell us, is hopeless all returning.
Evil on ye, the shades of evil Orcus,
Shades all beauteous happy things devouring,
Such a beauteous happy bird ye took him. - 15
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? CATULLUS.
Ah ! for pity ; but ah ! for him the sparrow,
Our poor sparrow, on whom to think my lady's
Eyes do angrily redden all a-weeping.
IV.
THE puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
Of every ship professes agilest to ba
Nor yet a timber o'er the waves alertly flew
She might not aim to pass it ; oary-wing'd alike
To fleet beyond them, or to scud beneath a sail. 5
Nor here presumes denial any stormy coast
Of Adriatic or the Cyclad orbed isles,
A Rhodes immemorial, or that icy Thrace,
Propontis, or the gusty Pontic ocean-arm,
Whereon, a pinnace after, in the days of yore 10
A leafy shaw she budded ; oft Cytorus' height
With her did inly whisper airy colloquy.
2.
Amastris, you by Pontus, you, the box-clad hill
Of high Cytorus, all, the pinnace owns, to both
Was ever, is familiar; in the primal years 15
She stood upon your hoary top, a baby tree,
Within your haven early dipt a virgin oar :
To carry thence a master o'er the surly seas,
A world of angry water, hail'd to left, to right
The breeze of invitation, or precisely set 20
The sheets together op'd to catch a kindly Jove.
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? CATULLUS.
Nor yet of any power whom the coasts adore
Was heard a vow to soothe them, all the weary way
From outer ocean unto glassy quiet here.
But all the past is over ; indolently now 25
She rusts, a life in autumn, and her age devotes
To Castor and with him ador'd, the twin divine.
V.
LIVING, Lesbia, we should e'en be loving.
Sour severity, tongue of eld maligning,
All be to us a penny's estimation.
Suns set only to rise again to-morrow.
We, when sets in a little hour the brief light,
Sleep one infinite age, a night for ever.
Thousand kisses, anon to these an hundred,
Thousand kisses again, another hundred,
Thousand give me again, another hundred.
Then once heedfully counted all the thousands,
We'll uncount them as idly ; so we shall not
Know, nor traitorous eye shall envy, knowing
All those myriad happy many kisses.
VI.
BUT that, Flavius, hardly nice or honest
This thy folly, methinks Catullus also
E'en had known it, a whisper had betray'd thee.
Some she-malady, some unhealthy wanton,
Fires thee verily : thence the shy denial.
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? CATULLUS. 5
Least, you keep not a lonely night of anguish ;
Quite too clamorous is that idly-feigning
Couch, with wreaths, with a Syrian odour oozing ;
Then that pillow alike at either utmost
Verge deep-dinted asunder, all the trembling 10
Play, the strenuous unsophistication ;
All, O prodigal, all alike betray thee.
Why ? sides shrunken, a sullen hip disabled,
Speak thee giddy, declare a misdemeanour.
So, whatever is yours to tell or ill or 15
Good, confess it. A witty verse awaits thee
And thy lady, to place ye both in heaven.
VII.
ASK me, Lesbia, what the sum delightful
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.
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? CATULLUS.
VI I L
AH poor Catullus, learn to play the fool no more.
Lost is the lost, thou know'st it r 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 thoult be mourning thus to pine unask'd alway.
O past retrieval faithless ! Ah what hours are thine ! 1 5
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,
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? CATULLUS.
Speak they truly that you your hearth revisit,
Brothers duteous, homely mother aged ?
Yes, believe them. O happy news, Catullus !
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,
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.
So, arrived, in a trice we fell on endless 5
Themes col! 6quial ; 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.
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? CATULLUS.
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
Sjpite, 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 ;
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? CATULLUS. 9
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 Caesar, 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.
Not believe me ? believe a friendly brother,
Laughing Pollio ; he declares a talent
Poor indemnification, he the parlous
Child of voluble humour and facetious.
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? io CATULLUS.
So face hendecasyllables, a thousand,
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
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.
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,
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.
? ?
? x PREFACE.
of this epistle, but not of this disaster, still less of this
direction. The other element of quantity is less
rigidly defined; for (i) syllables strictly long, as /,
thy, so, are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made
long by the accent falling upon them are in some
cases shortened, as rulne, perished, cruel ; (3) syllables
which the absence of the accent only allows to be long
in thesi, are, in virtue of the classical laws of position,
permitted to rank as long elsewhere moment of his,
of this epistle. It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed. Pentameters like
Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite ;
sapphics like
Are then humane mindes privileged so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils ?
hexameters like
fire no liquor can cool : NeptiinJs realm would not avail us.
Nurs inward maladies, which have not scope to bee breath 1 d out.
Oh no no, worthie shepherd, worth can never enter a title ;
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please
either an average reader or a classically trained
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? PREFACE. xi
student. The same may be said of the translation
into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of
Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse
of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr.
Arber). Here is his version of Eel. I. , i TO.
MELIBAEUS.
Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie c haunting :
We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remoued,
And fro our pastures swecte : thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
Makst thicke groues to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.
O Melibaeus, he was no man, but a God who releeude me :
Euer he shalbe my God : from this same Sheepcot his alters
Neuer, a tender lambe shall want, with blood to bedew them.
This good gift did he giue, to my steeres thus freelie to wander,
And to my selfe (thou. seest) on pipe to resound what I listed.
ib. 50 56.
Here no unwoonted foode shall grieue young theaues who be laded,
Nor the infections foule of neighbours flocke shall annoie them.
Happie olde man. In shaddowy bankes and coole prettie places,
Heere by the quainted floodes and springs most holie remaining.
Here, these quicksets fresh which lands seuer out fro thy neighbors
And greene willow rowes which Hiblae bees doo rejoice in,
Off fine whistring noise, shall bring sweete sleepe to thy sences.
The following stanzas are from a Sapphic ode into
which Webbe translated, or as we should say, trans-
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? xii PREFACE.
posed the fourth Eclogue of Spenser's Sheepheardes
Calendar.
Say, behold did ye euer her Angelikeface,
Like to Phoebe fayre ? or her heauenly hauour
And the princelike grace that in her remaineth ?
haueyee the like seene ?
Vnto that place Caliope dooth high her,
Where my Goddesse shines : to the same the Muser
After her -with sweete Violines about them
cheerefully tracing.
All ye Sheepheardes maides that about the greene dwell,
Speede ye there to her grace, but among ye take he;de
All be Virgins pure that aproche to deck her,
dutie requireth.
When ye shall present ye before her in place,
See ye not your selues doo demeane too rudely :
Bynd the fillets ; and to be fate the waste gyrt
fast with a tawdryne.
Bring the Pinckes therewith many Gellifloivres sweete,
And the Cullambynes : let vs haue the Wynesops,
With the Coronation that among the loue laddes
wontes to be worne much.
Daffadowndillies all a long the ground strowe,
And the Cowslyppe with a prety paunce let heere lye.
Kyngcuppe and Lillies so beloude of all men
and the deluceflowre.
There are many faults in these verses ; over quaint-
nesses of language, constructions impossible in English,
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? PREFACE. xiii
quantities of doubtful correctness, harsh elisions, for
Webbe has tried even elisions. Yet, if I may trust
my judgment, all of them can still be read with plea-
sure ; the sapphics may almost be called a success.
This is even more true of metres, where these faults
are less perceptible or more easily avoided, for in-
stance, Asclepiads. Take the verses on solitariness,
Arcadia, B. II. fin.
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness !
O how much I do like your solitariness !
Where man's mind hath a freed consideration
Of goodness to receive lovely direction.
or the hen decasyllabics immediately preceding,
Reason tell me thy minde, if here be reason,
In this strange violence, to make resistance,
Where sweet graces erect the stately banner.
It is obvious that a very little more trouble would
have converted these into very perfect and very
pleasing poems. Had Sir Philip Sidney written every
asclepiad on the model of Where man's mind hath a
freed consideration, every hendecasyllable like Where
sweet graces erect the stately banner, the adjustment of
accent and quantity thus attained might, I think, have
induced greater poets than he to make the experiment
on a larger scale. But neither he nor his contem-
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? xiv PREFACE.
poraries were permitted to grasp as a principle a
regularity which they sometimes secured by chance ;
nor, so far as I am aware, have the various revivals of
ancient metre in this country or Germany in any case
consistently carried out the whole theory, without
which the reproduction is partial, and cannot look
for a more than partial success. Even the four
specimens given in the posthumous edition of dough's
poems, two of them elegiac, one alcaic, one in
hexameters, though professedly constructed on a
quantitative basis, and, in one instance (Trunks the
forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing, <&c. ) com-
bining legitimate quantity (in which accent and
position are alike observed) with illegitimate (in
which position is observed, but accent disregarded)
into a not unpleasing rhythm, cannot be considered as
more than imperfect realizations of the true positional
principle. Tennyson's three specimens are, at least
in English, still unique. It is to be hoped that he
will not suffer them to remain so. Systems of Gly-
conics and Asclepiads are, if I mistake not, easily
manageable, and are only thought foreign to the
genius of our language because they have never been
written on strict principles of art by a really great
master.
What, then, are the rules on which such rhythms
become possible? They are, briefly, these: (i) ac-
cented syllables, as a general rule, are long, though
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? PREFACE. xv
some syllables which count as long need not be
accented, as in
All that on earth' 's leas blooms, what blossoms Thessaly nursing,
blossoms, though only accented on the first syllable,
counts for a spondee, the shortness of the second o
being partly helped out by the two consonants which
follow it; partly by the fact that the syllable is in
thesi ; (2) the laws of position are to be observed,
according to the general rules of classical prosody :
(a) dactyls terminating in a consonant like beautiful,
bounteous, or ending in a double vowel or a diphthong
like all of you, surely may, come to thee, must be
followed by a word beginning with a vowel or y or h ;
dactyls terminating in a vowel or y, like slippery,
should be followed, except in rare cases, by words
beginning with a consonant; trochees, whether com-
posed of one word or more, should, if ending in a
consonant, be followed by a vowel, if ending in
the vowel a, by a consonant, thus, planted around
not pla? tted beneath, Aurora the sun's not Aurora
a sun's (see however, Ixiv. 253), but unto a wood, any
again, sorry at all, you be amused, (b) Syllables made
up of a vowel followed by two or more consonants,
each of which is distinctly heard in pronunciation, as
long, sins, part, band, waits, souls, ears, must, heart,
bright, strength, end, and, rapt, hers, dealt, moment,
bosoms, answers, mountains, bearest, tumbling, giving,
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? xvi PREFACE.
coming, harbour/;;^, dimcu/t, imminenf, stratagems,
utterance, happiest, tremblingly, can never rank as
short, even if unaccented and followed by a vowel,
h or y. Thus, to go back to Longfellow's line,
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
forest, murmuring, pines and the, are all inadmissible.
But where a vowel is followed by two consonants, one
of which is unheard or only heard slightly, as in accuse,
sh#//, awemble, dissemble, kindm, compass, affect,
appear, annoy, or when the second or third con-
sonant is a liquid, as in betray, beslime, besmear, depress,
dethrone, agree, the vowel preceding is so much more
short than long as to be regularly admissible as short,
rarely admissible as long. On this principle I have
allowed disorderly, tendntlSss, heavenly, to rank as
dactyls.
These rules are after all only an outline, and per-
haps can never be made more. It will be observed
that they are more negative than positive. The reason
of this is not far to seek. The main difference between
my verses and those of other contemporary writers
the one point on which I claim for myself the merit
of novelty is the strict observance throughout of the
rules of position. But the strict observance of posi-
tion is in effect the strict avoidance of unclassical
collocations of syllables : it is almost wholly negative.
To illustrate my meaning I will instance the poems
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? PREFACE. xvii
written in pure iambics, the Phaselus ille and Quis hoc
potest uidere. Heyse translates the first line of the
former of these poems by
Die Gahotte, die ihr schauet, Hebe Herrn,
and this would be a fair representation of a pure
iambic line, according to the views of most German
and most English writers. Yet not only is Die no short
syllable, but ihr, itself long, is made more hopelessly
long by preceding three consonants in schauet, just as
the last syllable of schauet, although in itself short,
loses its right to stand for a true short in being
followed by the first consonant of liebe. My own
translation,
The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
whatever its defects, is at least a pretty exact repre-
sentation of a pure iambic line. xxix. 6-8, are thus
translated by Heyse :
Und jener soil in Uebermuthes Ueberfltiss
Von einem Bett zum andern in die Runde gehn ?
by me thus,
Shall he in 6'er-assumption, 6 'er --repletion he,
Sedately saunter every dainty couch along?
The difference is purely negative ; I have bound
myself to avoid certain positions forbidden by the
laws of ancient prosody. To some I may seem to
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? xviii PREFACE.
have lost in vigour by the process ; yet I believe the
sense of triumph over the difficulties of our language,
the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and per-
ceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which,
as much as anything, contributes to the per-
manent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification,
will more than compensate for any shortcomings
which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable.
The same may be said of the elaborately artificial
poem to Camerius (c. lv. ), and the almost unapproach-
able Attis (c. Ixiii. ). Here, at least half the interest
lies in the varied turns of the metre ; if these can be
represented with anything like faithfulness, the gain
in exactness of prosody is enough, in my judgment,
to counterbalance the possible loss of freedom in
expression.
There is another circumstance which tends to
make modern rules of prosody necessarily negative.
Quantity, in English revivals of ancient metre, depends
not only on position, but on accent. But accent
varies greatly in different words ; heavy level ever
cometh any, have the same accent as empty evil either
boometh penny ; but the first syllable in the former
set of words is lighter than in the latter. Hence,
though accented, they may, on occasion, be con-
sidered and used as short ; as, on the same principle,
dolorotis stratagem echoeth family, usually dactyls,
may, on occasion, become tribrachs. But how lay
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? PREFACE. xix
\
down any positive rule in a matter necessarily so fluc-
tuating? We cannot. All we can do is to refuse
admission as short syllables to any heavier accented
syllable. Here, then, much must be left to individual
discretion. My translation of the Attis will best
show my own feeling in the matter. But I am fully
aware that in this respect I have fallen far short of
consistency. I have made any sometimes short,
more often long ; to, usually short, is lengthened in
Ixi. 26, Ixvii. 19, Ixviii. 143; with is similarly long,
though not followed by a consonant, in Ixi. 36 ; given
is long in xxviii. 7, short in xi. 17, Ixiv. 213; are is
short in Ixvii. 14 ; and more generally many syllables
allowed to pass for short in the Attis are elsewhere
long. Nor have I scrupled to forsake the ancient
quantity in proper names ; following Heyse, I have
made the first syllable of Verona short in xxxv. 3,
Ixvii. 34, although it retains its proper quantity in
Ixviii. 27. Again, Pheneos is a dactyl in Ixviii. in,
while Satrachus is an anapaest in xcv. 5. In many
of these instances I have acted consciously ; if the
writers of Greece and Rome allowed many syllables
to be doubtful, and almost as a principle avoid per-
fect uniformity in the quantity of proper names, a
greater freedom may not unfairly be claimed by their
modern imitators. If Catullus could write Pharsaliam
coeunt, Pharsdlia regna frequentant, similar license
may surely be extended to me. I believe, indeed,
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? xx PREFACE.
that nothing in my translation is as violent as the
double quantity just mentioned in Catullus ; but if
there is, I would remind my readers of Goethe's
answer to the boy who told him he had been guilty of
a hexameter with seven feet, and applying the re-
mark to any seeming irregularities in my own transla-
tion would say, Lass die Bestie stehen.
It would not be difficult to swell this Preface by
enlarging on the novelty of the attempt, and indirectly
panegyrising my own undertaking.
I doubt whether
any real advantage would thus be gained. If I have
merely produced an elaborate failure, however much
I might expatiate on the principles which guided me,
my work would be an elaborate failure still. I shall
therefore say no more, and shall be contented if I
please the, even in this classically trained country, too
limited number of readers who can really hear with
their ears if, to use the borrowed language of a great
poet, I succeed in making myself vocal to the intelli-
gent alone.
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? CATULLUS.
I.
WHO shall take thee, the new, the dainty volume,
Purfled glossily, fresh with ashy pumice ?
You, Cornelius ; you of old did hold them
Something worthy, the petty witty nothings,
While you venture, alone of all Italians, 5
Time's vast chronicle in three books to circle,
Jove ! how arduous, how divinely learned!
Therefore welcome it, yours the little outcast,
This slight volume. O yet, supreme awarder,
Virgin, save it in ages on for ever. 10
II.
SPARROW, favourite of my own beloved,
Whom to play with, or in her arms to fondle,
She delighteth, anon with hardy-pointed
Finger angrily doth provoke to bite her :
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? CATULLUS.
When my lady, a lovely star to long for, 5
Bends her splendour awhile to tricksy frolic ;
Peradventure a careful heart beguiling,
Pardie, heavier ache perhaps to lighten ;
Might I, like her, in happy play caressing
Thee, my dolorous heart awhile deliver ! 10
I would joy, as of old the maid rejoiced
Racing fleetly, the golden apple eyeing,
Late-won loosener of the wary girdle.
III.
WEEP each heavenly Venus, all the Cupids,
Weep all men that have any grace about ye.
Dead the sparrow, in whom my love delighted,
The dear sparrow, in whom my love delighted.
Yea, most precious, above her eyes, she held him, 5
Sweet, all honey : a bird that ever hail'd her
Lady mistress, as hails the maid a mother.
Nor would move from her arms away: but only
Hopping round her, about her, hence or hither,
Piped his colloquy, piped to none beside her. 10
Now he wendeth along the mirky pathway,
Whence, they tell us, is hopeless all returning.
Evil on ye, the shades of evil Orcus,
Shades all beauteous happy things devouring,
Such a beauteous happy bird ye took him. - 15
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? CATULLUS.
Ah ! for pity ; but ah ! for him the sparrow,
Our poor sparrow, on whom to think my lady's
Eyes do angrily redden all a-weeping.
IV.
THE puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
Of every ship professes agilest to ba
Nor yet a timber o'er the waves alertly flew
She might not aim to pass it ; oary-wing'd alike
To fleet beyond them, or to scud beneath a sail. 5
Nor here presumes denial any stormy coast
Of Adriatic or the Cyclad orbed isles,
A Rhodes immemorial, or that icy Thrace,
Propontis, or the gusty Pontic ocean-arm,
Whereon, a pinnace after, in the days of yore 10
A leafy shaw she budded ; oft Cytorus' height
With her did inly whisper airy colloquy.
2.
Amastris, you by Pontus, you, the box-clad hill
Of high Cytorus, all, the pinnace owns, to both
Was ever, is familiar; in the primal years 15
She stood upon your hoary top, a baby tree,
Within your haven early dipt a virgin oar :
To carry thence a master o'er the surly seas,
A world of angry water, hail'd to left, to right
The breeze of invitation, or precisely set 20
The sheets together op'd to catch a kindly Jove.
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? CATULLUS.
Nor yet of any power whom the coasts adore
Was heard a vow to soothe them, all the weary way
From outer ocean unto glassy quiet here.
But all the past is over ; indolently now 25
She rusts, a life in autumn, and her age devotes
To Castor and with him ador'd, the twin divine.
V.
LIVING, Lesbia, we should e'en be loving.
Sour severity, tongue of eld maligning,
All be to us a penny's estimation.
Suns set only to rise again to-morrow.
We, when sets in a little hour the brief light,
Sleep one infinite age, a night for ever.
Thousand kisses, anon to these an hundred,
Thousand kisses again, another hundred,
Thousand give me again, another hundred.
Then once heedfully counted all the thousands,
We'll uncount them as idly ; so we shall not
Know, nor traitorous eye shall envy, knowing
All those myriad happy many kisses.
VI.
BUT that, Flavius, hardly nice or honest
This thy folly, methinks Catullus also
E'en had known it, a whisper had betray'd thee.
Some she-malady, some unhealthy wanton,
Fires thee verily : thence the shy denial.
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? CATULLUS. 5
Least, you keep not a lonely night of anguish ;
Quite too clamorous is that idly-feigning
Couch, with wreaths, with a Syrian odour oozing ;
Then that pillow alike at either utmost
Verge deep-dinted asunder, all the trembling 10
Play, the strenuous unsophistication ;
All, O prodigal, all alike betray thee.
Why ? sides shrunken, a sullen hip disabled,
Speak thee giddy, declare a misdemeanour.
So, whatever is yours to tell or ill or 15
Good, confess it. A witty verse awaits thee
And thy lady, to place ye both in heaven.
VII.
ASK me, Lesbia, what the sum delightful
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.
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? CATULLUS.
VI I L
AH poor Catullus, learn to play the fool no more.
Lost is the lost, thou know'st it r 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 thoult be mourning thus to pine unask'd alway.
O past retrieval faithless ! Ah what hours are thine ! 1 5
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,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2015-01-02 09:07 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc2. ark:/13960/t2t43m85r Public Domain / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd
? CATULLUS.
Speak they truly that you your hearth revisit,
Brothers duteous, homely mother aged ?
Yes, believe them. O happy news, Catullus !
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,
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.
So, arrived, in a trice we fell on endless 5
Themes col! 6quial ; 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.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2015-01-02 09:07 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc2. ark:/13960/t2t43m85r Public Domain / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd
? CATULLUS.
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
Sjpite, 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 ;
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2015-01-02 09:07 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/uc2. ark:/13960/t2t43m85r Public Domain / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd
? CATULLUS. 9
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 Caesar, 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.
Not believe me ? believe a friendly brother,
Laughing Pollio ; he declares a talent
Poor indemnification, he the parlous
Child of voluble humour and facetious.
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? io CATULLUS.
So face hendecasyllables, a thousand,
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
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.
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,
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.
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