Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/35

 so for you. For let the morning only come—I will be off to the shelves of the booksellers, sweep together Caesii, Aquini, Suffenus, and all such poisonous stuff, and with these penalties will I pay you back for your gift. You poets meantime, farewell, away with you, back to where you brought your cursed feet from, you plagues of our time, you worst of poets.

O my readers—if there be any who will read my nonsense, and not shrink from touching me with your hands.

who have supposed me to be immodest, on account of my verses, because these are rather voluptuous. For the holy poet ought to be chaste himself, his verses need not be.

Colonia, you who wish to have a long bridge on which to celebrate your games, and are quite ready to dance, but fear the ill-jointed legs of your little bridge, standing as it does on old posts done up again, lest it should fall sprawling and sink down in the depths of the marsh;—so may you have a good bridge made for you according to your desire, one in which the rites of Salisubsilus himself may be undertaken, as you grant me this gift, Colonia, to make me laugh my loudest. There is a townsman of mine whom I wish to go headlong from your bridge over head and heels into the mud;—only let it be where is the blackest and deepest pit of the whole

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