style="font-size:15px;"> Now she resigns thee; child, do thou resign no less,10 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.
15 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.
IX.
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?
5 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.
10 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.
1.
5 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
10 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
15 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,
20 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,
25 '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,
30 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.'
XI.
Furius and Aurelius, O my comrades,
Whether your Catullus attain to farthest
Ind, the long shore lash'd by reverberating
Surges Eoan;
5 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
10 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;
15 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
20 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.'
XII.
Marrucinian Asinius, hardly civil
Left-hand practices o'er the merry wine-cup.
Watch occasion, anon remove the napkin.
