Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/49



We girls and chaste boys are lieges of Diana. Diana let us sing, chaste boys and girls. child of Latona, great offspring of greatest Jove, whom thy mother laid down by the Delian olive-tree, that thou mightest be the lady of mountains and green woods, and sequestered glens and sounding rivers; thou art called Juno Lucina by mothers in pains of travail, thou art called mighty Trivia and Moon with counterfeit light. Thou, goddess, measuring out the year with monthly course, fillest full with goodly fruits the rustic home of the husbandman. Be thou hallowed by whatever name thou wilt; and as of old thou wert wont, with good help keep safe the race of Romulus.

I ask you, papyrus leaf, to tell the gentle poet, my friend Caecilius, to come to Verona, leaving the walls of Novum Comum and the shore of Larius: for I wish him to receive certain thoughts of a friend of his and mine. Wherefore if he is wise he will c. 5