Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/67



Otho's head (very small it is) and your half-washed legs, rustic Erius these points at least, if not all about them, I should wish to be disliked by you and Fuficius, that old fellow renewed to youth again.

You will again be angered by my iambics, my innocent iambics, you one and only general.

I beg you, if I may without offence, show me where is your dark corner. I have looked for you in the lesser Campus, in the Circus, in all the booksellers' shops, in the hallowed temple of great Jove. At the same time, in the portico of Magnus, I caught hold of all the girls, my friend, who nevertheless faced me with untroubled look. Ah, even so I myself kept asking them for you 'Give me my Camerius, you wicked girls!' One of them, baring her naked bosom, says 'Look here, he is hiding between my rosy breasts.' Well, to bear with you is now a labour of Hercules. Not though I should be moulded in brass like the fabled warder of Crete, not though I were borne aloft like flying Pegasus, not if I were Ladas or wingfooted Perseus, not if I were the swift snow-white pair of Rhesus could I overtake you: add to these the feather-footed gods and those that fly, and with them call for the swiftness of the winds; though you should harness all these, Camerius, and press them into my service, yet I should be tired out in my very marrow, and worn away with many