Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/57



out again with louder voice, 'Dirty drab, give back the tablets, give back the tablets, dirty drab! ' We do no good: she does not mind. We must change our plan and method, if you can do better so — ' Maiden modest and chaste, give back the tablets.'

I greet you, lady, you who neither have a tiny nose, nor a pretty foot, nor black eyes, nor long fingers, nor dry mouth, nor indeed a very refined tongue, mistress of the bankrupt of Formiae. Is it you who are pretty, as the Province tells us? is it with you that our Lesbia is compared? O, this age! how tasteless and illbred it is!

My farm, whether Sabine or Tiburtine (for those affirm that you are Tiburtine, who do not love to annoy Catullus, but those who do will wager anything that you are Sabine)— but at all events, whether you are Sabine or more rightly Tiburtine, I was glad to be in your retreat, 'twixt country and town, and to clear my chest of the troublesome cough, which my greediness gave me (not undeservedly) whilst I was running after costly feasts. I wanted to go to dinner with Sestius, and so I read a speech of his against the candidate Antius, full of poison and plague. Thereupon a shivering chill and a constant cough shook me to pieces, till at last I fled to your bosom, and set myself right again by a diet c. 6