Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/31

 he will tramp across the high Alps, to visit the memorials of great Caesar, the Gaulish Rhine, the formidable and remotest Britons, — O my friends, ready as you are to encounter all these risks with me, whatever the will of the gods above shall bring, take a little message, not a kind message, to my mistress. Bid her live and be happy with her paramours, three hundred of whom she holds at once in her embrace, not loving one of them really, but again and again breaking the strength of all. And let her not look to find my love, as before; my love, which by her fault has dropped, like a flower on the meadow's edge, when it has been touched by the plough passing by.

Asinius Marrucinus, you do not make a pretty use of your left hand when we are laughing and drinking; you take away the napkins of people who are off their guard. Do you think this a good joke? You are mistaken, you silly fellow; it is ever so ill-bred, and in the worst taste. You don't believe me? believe your brother Pollio, who would be glad that what you have stolen should be redeemed at the cost of a whole talent: for he is a boy who is a connoisseur of all that is witty and amusing. So now either look out for three hundred hendecasyllables, or send me back my napkin — which does not concern me for what it is worth, but because it is a keepsake from my old friend; for Fabullus and Veranius sent me some Saetaban napkins as a present from Hiberia. ' How can I help being fond of these, as I am of my dear Veranius and Fabullus?