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

Track the long records of a mighty Cæsar,

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,

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.

'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.'

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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.

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?

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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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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?

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

This, thy drudgery 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.

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!

Now good-morrow! away with evil omen

Whence ill destiny lamely bore ye, clumsy

Poet-rabble, an age's execration!

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Readers, any that in the future ever

Scan my fantasies, haply lay upon me

Hands adventurous of solicitation—

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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.

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.

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,

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.

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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,

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

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.

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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,

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,

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,

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.

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,

As some mule in a glutinous sludge her rondel of iron.

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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

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

Grim necessity; this is all my sorrow.

Then hold, wanton, upon the verge; to-morrow

Comes preposterous incapacitation.

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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,