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.
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!