Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/93



they take their rest without bread; heavy sleep covers their eyes with drooping weariness, in soft slumber departs the raging madness of their mind. But when the sun with the flashing eyes of his golden face lightened the clear heaven, the spaces of hard earth, the wild sea, and chased away the shades of night with eager tramping steeds refreshed, then Sleep fled from wakened Attis and quickly was gone; him the goddess Pasithea received in her fluttering bosom. So after soft slumber, free from violent madness, as soon as Attis himself in his heart reviewed his own deed, and saw with clear mind without what and where he was, with surging mind again he sped back to the waves. There, looking out upon the waste seas with streaming eyes, thus did she piteously address her country with tearful voice. ' O my country that gavest me life! O my country that barest me! leaving whom, ah wretch! as runaway servants leave their masters, I have borne my foot to the forests of Ida, to live among snows and frozen lairs of wild beasts, and visit in my frenzy all their lurking-dens, — where then or in what region do I think thy place to be, O my country? Mine eye- balls unbidden long to turn their gaze to thee, while for a short space my mind is free from wild frenzy. I, shall I from my own home be borne far away into these forests? from my country, my possessions, my friends, my parents, shall I be absent? absent from the market, the wrestling-place, the race-course, the playground? unhappy, ah unhappy heart, again, again must thou complain. For what form of human figure is there which I had not? I, to be a woman —! I who was a stripling, I a youth, I a boy, I was the flower of the playground, I was once the glory of the palaestra: mine were crowded doorways, mine warm 65