Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Hopping round her, about her, hence or hither,

Piped his colloquy, piped to none beside her.

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.

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.

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1.

The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,

Of every ship professes agilest to be.

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.

Nor here presumes denial any stormy coast

Of Adriatic or the Cyclad orbed isles,

A Rhodos immemorial, or that icy Thrace,

Propontis, or the gusty Pontic ocean-arm,

Whereon, a pinnace after, in the days of yore

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

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

The sheets together op'd to catch a kindly Jove.

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

She rusts, a life in autumn, and her age devotes

To Castor and with him ador'd, the twin divine.

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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.

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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.

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

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

Good, confess it. A witty verse awaits thee

And thy lady, to place ye both in heaven.

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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

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;

These no curious eye can wholly number,

Tongue of jealousy ne'er bewitch nor harm them.

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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.

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

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!

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.

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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!

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?

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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

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,

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.

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.

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,

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.

'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.'

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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,

Sacan or grim Parthian arrow-bearer,

Fields the rich Nile discolorates, a seven-fold

River abounding;

Whether o'er high Alps he afoot ascending