The Poems and Fragments of Catullus
or the hendecasyllables immediately preceding,
CATULLUS.
Tickell , Theristes or the Lordling
For a spirited, though coarse, version of this poem, see Cotton's Poems, p. 608, ed. 1689.
Browning , Flight of the Duchess
move quickly over the road. So Shakespeare:
2nd Part of Henry IV. , Act i. sc. 1.
In the metre of this poem Catullus observes the following general type -
Troilus and Cressida , Act iv. sc. 5.
abide as, I think, in Spenser's Faerie Queene , vi. 2, 19.
Midsummer Night's Dream , iii. 2.
I have combined thou with your uestras potuisti
bent as they move rapidly through the water.
A verse seems to have been lost here, which I have thus supplied.
- Pope , Epitaph on the children of Lord Digby.
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.