Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/127



away the tears with your hand! What mighty god has changed you thus? is it that lovers cannot bear to be far away from the side of him they love? And there to all the gods for your dear husband's welfare you consecrated me with blood of bulls, so he should complete his return. He in no long time had added conquered Asia to the territories of Egypt. This is done; and now, given as due to the host of heaven, I pay your former vows by a new offering. Unwillingly, O queen, I was parted from your head, unwillingly, I swear both by you and by your head; by which if any swear vainly, let him reap a worthy recompense. But who can claim to be as strong as steel? Even that mountain was overthrown, the greatest of all in those shores which the bright son of Thia traverses, when the Medes created a new sea, and when the barbarian youth swam in their fleet through mid Athos. What shall locks of hair do, when such things as this yield to steel? O, Jupiter, may all the race of the Chalybes perish, and he, who first began to seek for veins under ground, and to draw out hard bars of iron! My sister locks, sundered from me just before, were mourning for my fate, when the own brother of Ethiopian Memnon appeared, striking the air with waving wings, the winged courser of Locrian Arsinoe. And he sweeping me away flies through the gales of heaven and places me in the chaste bosom of Venus. On that service had the Lady of Zephyrium herself sent her own minister, the Grecian queen, sojourner in the shores of Canopus. Then Venus — that among the various lights of heaven, not only from the brows of Ariadne should the golden crown be fixed, but that I too might shine, I, the