Chapter 7

Gellius--he's full meagre. It is no wonder, a friendly Mother, a sister is his loveable, healthy withal. Then so friendly an uncle, a world of pretty relations. Must not a man so blest meagre abide to the last? Yea, let his hand touch only what hands touch only to trespass; 5 Reason enough to become meagre, enough to remain.

XC.

Rise from a mother's shame with Gellius hatefully wedded, One to be taught gross rites Persic, a Magian he. Weds with a mother a son, so needs should a Magian issue, Save in her evil creed Persia determineth ill. Then shall a son, so born, chant down high favour of heaven, 5 Melting lapt in flame fatly the slippery caul.

XCI.

Think not a hope so false rose, Gellius, in me to find thee Faithful in all this love's anguish ineffable yet, For that in heart I knew thee, had in thee honour imagin'd, Held thee a soul to abhor vileness or any reproach.

Only in her, I knew, thou found'st not a mother, a sister, 5 Her that awhile for love wearily made me to pine. Yea tho' mutual use did bind us straitly together, Scarcely methought could lie cause to desert me therein.

Thou found'st reason enow; so joys thy spirit in every Shame, wherever is aught heinous, of infamy born. 10

XCII.

Lesbia doth but rail, rail ever upon me, nor endeth Ever. A life I stake, Lesbia loves me at heart. Ask me a sign? Our score runs parallel. I that abuse her Ever, a life to the stake, Lesbia, love thee at heart.

XCIII.

Lightly methinks I reck if Caesar smile not upon me: Care not, whether a white, whether a swarth-skin, is he.

XCIV.

Mentula--wanton is he; his calling sure is a wanton's. Herbs to the pot, 'tis said wisely, the name to the man.

XCV.

Nine times winter had end, nine times flush'd summer in harvest, Ere to the world gave forth Cinna, the labour of years, Zmyrna; but in one month Hortensius hundred on hundred Verses, an unripe birth feeble, of hurry begot.

Zmyrna to far Satrachus, to the stream of Cyprus, ascendeth; 5 Zmyrna with eyes unborn study the centuries hoar. Padus her own ill child shall bury, Volusius' annals; In them a mackerel oft house him, a wrapper of ease.

Dear to my heart be a friend's unbulky memorial ever; Cherish an Antimachus, weighty as empty, the mob. 10

XCVI.

If to the silent dead aught sweet or tender ariseth, Calvus, of our dim grief's common humanity born; When to a love long cold some pensive pity recals us, When for a friend long lost wakes some unhappy regret; Not so deeply, be sure, Quintilia's early departing 5 Grieves her, as in thy love dureth a plenary joy.

XCVIII.

Asks some booby rebuke, some prolix prattler a judgment? Vettius, all were said verily truer of you. Tongue so noisome as yours, come chance, might surely on order Bend to the mire, or lick dirt from a beggarly shoe. Would you on all of us, all, bring, Vettius, utterly ruin? 5 Speak; not a doubt, 'twill come utterly, ruin on all.

XCIX.

Dear one, a kiss I stole, while you did wanton a-playing, Sweet ambrosia, love, never as honily sweet.

Dearly the deed I paid for; an hour's long misery waning Ended, as I agoniz'd hung to the point of a cross, Hoping vain purgation; alas! no potion of any 5 Tears could abate that fair angriness, youthful as you.

Hardly the sin was in act, your lips did many a falling Drop dilute, which anon every finger away Cleansed apace, lest still my mouth's infection abiding Stain, like slaver abhorr'd breath'd from a foul fricatrice. 10

Add, that a booty to love in misery me to deliver You did spare not, a fell worker of all agonies, So that, again transmuted, a kiss ambrosia seeming Sugary, turn'd to the strange harshness of harsh hellebore.

Then such dolorous end since your poor lover awaiteth, 15 Never a kiss will I venture, a theft any more.

C.

Quintius, Aufilena; to Caelius, Aufilenus; Lovers each, fair flower either of youths Veronese. One to the brother bends, and one to the sister. A noble Friendship, if e'er was true friendship, a rare brotherhood.

Ask me to which I lean? You, Caelius: yours a devotion 5 Single, a faith of tried quality, steady to me; Into my inmost veins when love sank fiercely to burn them. Mighty be your bright love, Caelius, happy be you!

CI.

Borne o'er many a land, o'er many a level of ocean, Here to the grave I come, brother, of holy repose, Sadly the last poor gifts, death's simple duty, to bring thee; Unto the silent dust vainly to murmur a cry.

Since thy form deep-shrouded an evil destiny taketh 5 From me, O hapless ghost, brother, O heavily ta'en, Yet this bounty the while, these gifts ancestral of usance Homely, the sad slight store piety grants to the tomb; Drench'd in a brother's tears, and weeping freshly, receive them; Yea, take, brother, a long Ave, a timeless adieu. 10

CII.

If to a friend sincere, Cornelius, e'er was a secret Trusted, a friend whose soul steady to honour abides; Me to the same brotherhood doubt not to be inly devoted, Sworn upon oath, to the last secret, an Harpocrates.

CIII.

Briefly, the sesterces all, give back, full quantity, Silo, Then be a bully beyond exorability, you: Else, if money be all, O cease so lewdly to practise Bawd, yet bully beyond exorability, you.

CIV.

What? should a lover adore, yet cruelly slander adoring? I my lady, than eyes goodlier easily she? Nay, I rail not at all. How rail, so blindly desiring? Tappo alone dare brave all that is heinous, or you.

CV.

Mentula toils, Pimplea, the Muses' mountain, ascending: They with pitchforks hurl Mentula dizzily down.

CVI.

Walks with a salesman a beauty, your eyes that beauty discerning? Doubt not your eyes speak true; Sir, 'tis a beauty to sell.

CVII.

If to delight man's wish, joy e'er unlook'd for, unhop'd for, Falleth, a joy were such proper, a bliss to the soul. Then 'tis a joy to the soul, like gold of Lydia precious, Lesbia mine, that thou com'st to delight me again.

Com'st yet again long-hop'd, long-look'd for vainly, returnest 5 Freely to me. O day white with a luckier hue! Lives there happier any than I, I only? a fairer Destiny? Life so sweet know ye, or aught parallel?

CVIII.

Loathly Cominius, if e'er this people's voice should arraign thee, Hoary with all unclean infamy, worthy to die; First should a tongue, I doubt not, of old so deadly to goodness, Fall extruded, of each vulture a hungry regale; Gouged be the carrion eyes some crow's black maw to replenish, 5 Stomach a dog's fierce teeth harry, a wolf the remains.

CIX.

Think you truly, belov'd, this bond of duty between us, Lasteth, an ever-new jollity, ne'er to decease? Grant it, Gods immortal, assure her promise in earnest; Yea, be the lips sincere; yea, be the words from her heart. So still rightly remain our lovers' charter, a life-long 5 Friendship in us, whose faith fades not away to the last.

CX.

Aufilena, the fair, if kind, is a favourite ever; Asks she a price, then yields frankly? the price is her own. You, that agreed to be kind, now vilely the treaty dishonour, Give not at all, nor again take;--'tis a wrong to a wrong.

Not to deceive were noble, a chastity ne'er had assented, 5 Aufilena; but you--blindly to grasp at a gain, Yet to withhold the effects,--'tis a greed more loathly than harlot's Vileness, a wretch whose limbs ply to the lusts of a town.

CXI.

One lord only to love, one, Aufilena, to live for, Praise can a bride nowhere goodlier any betide; Yet, when a niece with an uncle is even mother or even Cousin--of all paramours this were as heinous as all.

CXII.

Naso, if you show much, your company shows but a very Little; a man you show, Naso, a woman in one.

CXIII.

Pompey the first time consul, as yet Maecilia counted Two paramours; reappears Pompey a consul again, Two still, Cinna, remain; but grown, each unit an even Thousand. Truly the stock's fruitful: adultery breeds.

CXIV.

Rightly a lordly demesne makes Firman Mentula count for Wealthy! the rich fine things, then the variety there! Game in plenty to choose, fish, field, and meadow with hunting; Only the waste exceeds strangely the quantity still. Wealthy? perhaps I grant it; if all, wealth asks for, is absent. 5 Praise the demesne? no doubt; only be needy the man.

CXV.

Acres thirty in all, good grass, own Mentula master; Forty to plough; bare seas, arid or empty, the rest. Poorly methinks might Croesus a man so sumptuous equal, Counted in one rich park owner of all he can ask. Grass or plough, big woods, much mountain, mighty morasses; 5 On to the farthest North, on to the boundary main.

Vastness is all that is here; yet Mentula reaches a vaster-- Man? not so; 'tis a vast mountainous ominous He.

CXVI.

Oft with a studious heart, which hunted closely, requiring Skill great Battiades' poesies haply to send, Laying thus thy rage in rest, lest everlasting Darts should reach me, to wound still an assailable head:

Barren now I see that labour of any requital, 5 Gellius; here all prayers fall to the ground, nor avail. No; but a robe I carry, the barbs, thy folly, to muffle; Mine strike sure; thy deep injury _they_ shall atone.

FRAGMENTS.

II.

Here I give to be thine a fair grove, an holy, Priapus, Where thy Lampsacus holds thee in chamber seemly, Priapus; God, in every city, thou, most ador'd on a sea-shore Hellespontian, eminent most of oystery sea-shores.

IV.

Rapidly the spirit in an agony fled away.

V.

Where yon lucent mast-top, a cup of silver, arises.

NOTES.

VIII. 2.

_Lost is the lost, thou know'st it, and the past is past._

I am indebted for this expression to a translation of this poem by Dr. J.A. Symonds, the whole of which I should have quoted here, had it not been unfortunately mislaid.

XIV. 20.

_Plague-prodigy._

Proves a plague-prodigy to God and man.

BROWNING, _Ring and Book_, v. 664.

XVII. 26.

_Rondel._

The round plate of iron which, according to Rich, Companion to the Latin Dictionary, p. 609, formed the lower part of the sock worn by horses, mules, &c., when on a journey, and, unlike our horse-shoes, was removable at the end of it.

XXII. 11.

_Looby_

a clown.

Let me now the vices trace, From his father's scoundrel race. What could give the looby such airs? Were they masons? were they butchers?

TICKELL, _Theristes or the Lordling_, 23-26.

XXIII.

For a spirited, though coarse, version of this poem, see Cotton's Poems, p. 608, ed. 1689.

6 _Lathy._

On a lathy horse, all legs and length.

BROWNING, _Flight of the Duchess_, v. 21.

XXIX. 8.

The connexion between Adonis and the dove is specially referred to by Diogenianus (_Praef._ p. 180 in Leutsch and Schneidewin's _Paroemiographi Graeci_). It formed part of the legends of Cyprus, and was alluded to by the lyric poet Timocreon (_Bergk. Poetae Lyrici Graeci_, p. 1203). Compare Browning:--

Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus' Pet.

_Ring and Book_, v. 701.

XXXV. 7.

_So he'll quickly devour the way,_

move quickly over the road. So Shakespeare:

Starting so He seem'd in running to devour the way, Staying no longer question.

_2nd Part of Henry IV._, Act i. sc. 1.

XXXVII. 10.

_With scorpion I, with emblem all your haunt will scrawl._

A member of the Saraceni family at Vicenza, finding that a beautiful widow did not favour him, scribbled filthy pictures over the door. The affair was brought before the Council of Ten at Venice.

TROLLOPE'S _Paul the Pope_, p. 158.

XLIII. 3.

_Mouth scarce tenible,_

easily running over.

XLV. 7.

_A sulky lion._

Properly "green-eyed." The epithet would seem to be not merely picturesque; the glaring of the eyes would be more marked in proportion as the beast was in a fiercer and more excitable state.

LI. 5-12.

I watch thy grace; and in its place My heart a charmed slumber keeps, While I muse upon thy face; And a languid fire creeps Thro' my veins to all my frame, Dissolvingly and slowly: soon From thy rose-red lips my name Floweth; and then, as in a swoon, With dinning sound my ears are rife, My tremulous tongue faltereth, I lose my colour, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimmed with delicious draughts of warmest life.

TENNYSON, _Eleaenore_.

LIV. 6.

_Yet thou flee'st not above my keen iambics_.

This line is quoted as Catullus's by Porphyrion on Hor. c. 1. 16, 24. His words, _Catullus cum maledicta minaretur_, compared with the last lines of this poem, _Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice imperator_, seem to justify my view that they belong here. See my large edition, p. 217, fragm. I. The following line, _So may destiny, &c._, is a supplement of my own: it forms a natural introduction to the _Si non uellem_ of v. 10.

LV.

This is the only instance where Catullus has introduced a spondee into the second foot of the phalaecian, which then becomes decasyllabic. The alternation of this decasyllabic rhythm with the ordinary hendecasyllable is studiously artistic; I have retained it throughout. In the series of dactylic lines 17-22, Catullus no doubt intended to convey the idea of rapidity, as, in the spondaic line immediately following, of labour.

4 _You on Circus, in all the bills but you, Sir._

There seems to be no authority for the meaning ordinarily assigned to _libellis_, "book-shops." I prefer to explain the word placards, either announcing the sale of Camerius's effects, which would imply that he was in debt, or describing him as a lost article.

LXI.

In the rhythm of this poem, I have been obliged to deviate in two points from Catullus. (1) In him the first foot of each line is nearly always a trochee, only rarely a spondee: the monotonous effect of a positional trochee in English, to say nothing of the difficulty, induced me to substitute a spondee more frequently. (2) I have been rather less scrupulous in allowing the last foot of the glyconic lines to be a dactyl (-uu), in place of the more correct cretic (-u-).

108. The words in italics are a supplement of my own.

LXII. 39-61.

_Look in a garden croft, when a flower privily growing, &c._

_Opinion._ Look how a flower that close in closes grows, Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no ploughs, Which th' air doth stroke, sun strengthen, showers shoot higher, It many youths and many maids desire; The same, when cropt by cruel hand 'tis wither'd, No youths at all, no maidens have desired; So a virgin while untouch'd she doth remain Is dear to hers; but when with body's stain Her chaster flower is lost, she leaves to appear Or sweet to young men or to maidens dear.

_Truth._ Virgins, O Virgins, to sweet Hymen yield, For as a lone vine in a naked field Never extols her branches, never bears Ripe grapes, but with a headlong heaviness wears Her tender body, and her highest sprout Is quickly levell'd with her fading root; By whom no husbandmen, no youths will dwell; But if by fortune she be married well, To the elm her husband, many husbandmen And many youths inhabit by her then; So whilst a virgin doth untouch'd abide, All unmanur'd she grows old with her pride; But when to equal wedlock, in fit time, Her fortune and endeavour lets her climb, Dear to her love and parents she is held. Virgins, O Virgins, to sweet Hymen yield.

BEN JONSON, _The Barriers_.

LXIII.

In the metre of this poem Catullus observes the following general type--

--' | --' -- uu- u- -u -- | uu- uuu u- (so Heyse.) uu | uu

Except in 18, _Hilarate aere citatis erroribus animum_, 53, _Et earum omnia adirem furibunda latibula_, where the Ionic a minore, which seems to have been the original basis of the rhythm, is preserved intact in the former half of the line. I have followed Catullus generally with exactness, but with an occasional resolution of one long into two short syllables, where it has not been introduced by the poet, _e.g._ in 31, 34, 49, 64, 65, 68, 79. In v. 10 I have ventured on a license which Catullus does not admit, but which is, I think, justified by other and earlier specimens of the metre, an anaclasis of the original Ionic a minore at the end of the line. In reading this poem it should never be forgotten that there is a pause in the middle of each line, which practically divides it into two halves. Tennyson, in his _Boadicea_, written on the model of the _Attis_, divides each verse similarly in the middle; but in the first half he has changed the rhythm of Catullus to a trochaic rhythm, in the second, while producing much of the effect of the _Attis_ by the accumulation of short syllables at the end of the line, he has not bound himself to the same strictly defined feet as Catullus, and generally has preferred to take from the somewhat emasculate character of the verse by adding an unaccented syllable at the close.

LXIII.

8 _Taborine_

Beat loud the tabourines, let the trumpets blow.

_Troilus and Cressida_, Act iv. sc. 5.

16 _Aby_

abide; as, I think, in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, vi. 2, 19.

But he was fierce and whot, Ne time would give, nor any termes aby.

Below, lxiv. 297, I have used it in its more common meaning of atoning for, _Faerie Queene_, iv. 1, 53.

Yet thou, false Squire, his fault shalt deare aby, And with thy punishment his penance shalt supply.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, iii. 2.

Lest to thy peril thou aby it dear.

24 _Ululation._

There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star.

LONGFELLOW'S _Dante Inf_. iii. 22.

41 _When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime._

Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes, And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.

TENNYSON, _Tithonus_.

83 _On a nervy neck._

Four maned lions hale The sluggish wheels; solemn their toothed maws, Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails Covering their tawny brushes.

KEATS, _Endymion_, II. ad fin.

LXIV. 160.

_Yet to your household thou, your kindred palaces olden._

I have combined _thou_ with _your_ purposely, to suggest the idea conveyed in _uestras_ as opposed to _potuisti_, the family abode as opposed to the individual Theseus.

183 _Flexibly fleeting_

bent as they move rapidly through the water.

186 _No glimmer of hope_

from Heyse,

Keinerlei Flucht, kein Schimmer der Hoffnung, stumm liegt Alles.

258 _Gordian._

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue.

KEATS, _Lamia_, Part I.

308 _Wreaths sat on each hoar crown, whose snows flush' d rosy beneath them._

I have attempted here to give what I conceive Catullus may have meant to convey by the remarkable collocation _At roseo niueae residebant uertice uittae_. Properly, the wreaths are rosy, the locks snow-white; but the colour of the wreaths is so blent with the colour of the locks that each is lost in the other, and an inversion of epithets becomes possible.

_So, in fury of heart, shall death's stern reaper, Achilles._

A verse seems to have been lost here, which I have thus supplied.

LXVIII. 149.

_So, it is all I can, take, Allius, answer, a little Verse, to requite thy much friendship, a contrary boon_.

These little rites, a stone, a verse, receive, 'Tis all a father, all a friend can give.

POPE, _Epitaph on the children of Lord Digby._

LXIX. 4.

_Clarity_

clearness, transparency.

Here clarity of candour, history's soul, The critical mind in short.

BROWNING, _Ring and Book_, i. 925.

LXX.

Sir Philip Sidney thus translates this poem:--

Unto no body my woman saith shee had rather a wife be, Then to myself, not though Jove grew a suter of hers. These be her words, but a woman's words to a love that is eager, Midde [windes?] or waters stream do require to be writ.

XCIX. 10.

_Fricatrice._

To a lewd harlot, a base fricatrice.

BEN JONSON, _The Fox_, iv. 2.

THE END.

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Poems and Fragments of Catullus, by Catullus