Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/23

 green with box, my galley says that all this was and is well known to thee; she says that from her earliest birthtime she stood on thy top, in thy waters first dipped her blades, and thence over so many riotous seas brought her owner, whether the breeze from left or right invited, or Jove came down astern on both sheets at once; and that no vows to the gods of the shore were made by her all the time she was sailing from the furthest sea even to this limpid lake.

But these things are past and gone; now she rests in old age and retired leisure, and dedicates herself to thee, twin Castor, and thee, Castor's twin.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men.

Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we have made up many thousands, we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning, nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye, when he knows that our kisses are so many.

Flavius, if it were not that your mistress is rustic and unrefined, you would want to speak of her to your Catullus; you would not be able to help it. But