Gaius Valerius Catullus

“ Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men.
Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep5 of one unbroken night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we10 have made up many thousands, we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning, nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye, when he knows that our kisses are so many. ”

“ Now whereas he has for a wife a girl in the freshest flower of youth, — a girl too, more exquisite than a tender kidling, one who ought to be guarded15 more diligently than ripest grapes, — he lets her play as she will, and does not care one straw, and for his part does not stir himself, but lies like an alder in a ditch hamstrung by a Ligurian axe, with just as much perception of everything as if it did not exist anywhere at all. ”

“ You subalterns of Piso, a needy train, with Da 8'g a g e handy and easily carried, my excellent Veranius and you my Fabullus, how are you? have you borne cold and hunger with that windbag long enough? is there any gain, however small, to be seen in your tablets, entered as paid out, as there is in mine, who after following in my praetor's train put down on the credit side. So much for running
after powerful friends! But may the gods and goddesses bring many curses upon you, you blots on the names of Romulus and Remus. ”

“ I wish to call you and your love to the skies by the power of my merry verse.
VII
You ask how many kissings of you, Lesbia, are enough for me and more than enough. As great as is the number of the Libyan sand that lies on silphium-bearing Cyrene, between the oracle of sultry5 Jove and the sacred tomb of old Battus; or as many as are the stars, when night is silent, that see the stolen loves of men, — to kiss you with so many kisses, Lesbia, is enough and more than enough for your10 mad Catullus; kisses, which neither curious eyes may be able to count up nor an evil tongue to bewitch. ”

“ You are mistaken, you silly fellow; it is ever5 so ill-bred, and in the worst taste. You don't believe me? believe your brother Pollio, who would be glad that what you have stolen should be redeemed at the cost of a whole talent: for he is a boy who is a connoisseur of all that is witty and amusing. So now10 either look out for three hundred hendecasyllables, or send me back my napkin — which does not concern me for what it is worth, but because it is a keepsake from my old friend; for Fabullus and Veranius sent me some Saetaban napkins as a present from Hiberia. ”

“ But on the other hand you shall have from me love's very essence, or what is sweeter or more delicious than love, if sweeter there be; for I will give you some perfume 10 which the Venuses and Loves gave to my lady; and when you smell it, you will pray the gods to make you, Fabullus, nothing but nose.
XIV
If I did not love you more than my own eyes, my dearest Calvus, I should hate you, as we all hate Vatinius, because of this gift of yours; for what have I done, or what have I said, that you should bring5 destruction upon me with all these poets? ”

“ Sparrow, my lady's pet, with whom she often plays and holds you in her bosom, or gives you her finger-tip to peck and teases you to bite sharply, whenever she, the bright-shining lady of my love, has 5a fancy for some dear dainty toying, that (as I think) when the sharper pangs of love abate, she may find some small solace of her pain—ah, might I but play with you as she herself does, and lighten the gloomy 10cares of my heart! ”

“ He it is whom I want now to send head foremost from your bridge, to try whether he can all in a moment wake up his stupid lethargy, and leave his mind sprawling there25 on its back in the nasty sludge, as a mule leaves her iron shoe in the sticky mire.
XXII
That Suffenus, Varus, whom you know very well, is a charming fellow, and has wit and good manners. He also makes many more verses than anyone else. I suppose he has got some ten thousand or even more written out in full, and not, as is often done, put down on old scraps ”

“ True enough, we all arc under the same delusion, and there is no one whom you may not see to be a Suffenus in one thing or another. Every-10 body has his own fault assigned to him: but we do not see that part of the bag which hangs on our back. ”

“ I shall look5 upon you safe returned, and hear you telling of the country and its history, the various tribes of the Hiberians, as is your way, and drawing your neck nearer to me I shall kiss your beloved mouth and eyes. O, of all men more blest than others, who is10 more glad, more blest than I? ”

“ Furius, you who have neither a slave, nor a moneybox, nor a bug, nor a spider, nor a fire, but who have a father and a stepmother too, whose teeth can chew even a flintstone, you lead a merry life with your5 father and that dry stick, your father's wife. No wonder: you all enjoy the best health, your digestions are excellent, you have nothing to be afraid of ”

“ And besides this, your bodies are drier than horn, or drier still if drier there be, what with sun and cold and fasting. How can you, Furius, be otherwise than well and prosperous? You are free from sweat, free from15 spittle and rheum and tiresome running of the nose. ”

“ And this (says she) the shore of the blustering Adriatic does not deny, nor the Cyclad islands and famous Rhodes and the wild Thracian Propontis, nor the gloomy gulf of Pontus, where she who has since been a galley was formerly a leafy 10 forest: for in the height of Cytorus she often rustled with talking leaves. Pontic Amastris and Cytorus green with box, my galley says that all this was and is well known to thee ”