Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/141



Thee now far, far away, not among familiar graves, nor laid to rest near the ashes of thy kinsfolk, but

1 buried in hateful Troy, ill-omened Troy, a foreign land holds in a distant soil.

To Troy at that time all the youth of Greece is said to have hastened together, deserting their hearths and homes, that Paris might not enjoy undisturbed leisure in a peaceful chamber, rejoicing in the rape of his paramour.

1 By that sad chance then, fairest Laodamia, wast thou bereft of thy husband sweeter to thee than life and soul; so strong the tide of love, so whelming the eddy that bore thee into the sheer abyss, deep as that gulf which (say the Greeks) near Cyllenian

1 Pheneus drains away the swamp, and dries up the ground which erst the false-fathered son of Amphitryon is said to have dug out, cutting away the heart of the hill, what time with sure shaft he hit the monsters of Stymphalus at the bidding

1 of a meaner lord, that the door of heaven might be frequented by more gods, and that Hebe might not long be unmated. But thy deep love was deeper than that gulf, which taught thee though untamed to bear the yoke.

Not so dear to her age-stricken parent is the head of the late-born grandchild which his only daughter

1 nurses, who, scarce at length appearing as an heir to ancestral wealth, and having his name brought into the witnessed tablets, puts an end to the unnatural joy of the kinsman, now in his turn derided, and drives away the vulture that waits for the hoary

1 head; nor did any dove so much delight in her snowy mate, who is said to be ever snatching kisses with biting beak, more wantonly than any woman, be she amorous beyond others' measure. You alone