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.
Gellius, how if a man in lust with a mother, a sister
Rioteth, one uncheck'd night, to iniquity bare?
How if a man's dark passion an aunt's own chastity spare not?
Canst thou tell what vast infamy lieth on him?
Infamy lieth on him, no farthest Tethys, or ancient
Ocean, of hundred streams father, abolisheth yet.
Infamy none o'ersteps, nor ventures any beyond it.
Not tho' a scorpion heat melt him, his own paramour.