Short Poems

Lesbia rails without ceasing at me the whole day;
And yet, hang me, if Lesbia don't love me sincerely:
“How d'you know it?” you cry;—why, 'tis just my own way;
Tho' I rail without ceasing, I still love her dearly!

From Gellius, and his parents' guilt shall rise
A sage, deep-vers'd in Eastern sacrifice;
For, as from Persian oracles we learn,
Of son, and mother must the sage be born:
Soon, for the gods, the solemn song he'll frame,
And cast the entrails in the mystic flame.

If Gellius wastes, 'tis understood
His buxom mother's health is good,
His sister sportive, uncle sound,
His female cousins too abound:
By such connexions, to be sure,
Gellius is kept extremely poor:
Doing what ought not to be done,
No wonder he's that skeleton!

Tho' I hate, yet I love!—you'll perhaps ask me, how?
I can't tell; but I'm vext, and I feel that I do.

Wouldst thou, my gentle Quintius, that in thee
These very eyes should their preserver know;
Or, if ought dearer than these eyes can be,
That to thyself I should the blessing owe:
Then steal not her who, dearer than these eyes,
Is dearer than the dearest thing I prize!

Whence can those lips, that far out-sham'd the rose,
Assume a paleness like the wintry snows;
When from his home each morning Gellius flies,
Or when at two in sümmer noons he'll rise?
Fame whispers then, (but does she whisper right?)
“Too much thou revel'st in obscene delight.—”
Fame whispers right; for thy parch'd lips must shew
Thy lustful flame; nay, Virro tells it too.

Hope not, one plain, one honest mind;
To act the upright part, you'll find
Amid life's various crew:
The world's ungrateful; worth a name,
That rather meets with certain shame,
Than its own proper due!
By all, but chief by me, this truth is prov'd,
Who suffer most, where most I once was lov'd!

Once Lesbia vow'd, she would Catullus wed,
And scorn for him the blissful arms of Jove:
Then did my flame the lover's flame exceed;
'Twas fond, 'twas tender as a parent's love!
I know thee now; and, tho' more fierce I burn,
Yet I thy charms more cheap, more worthless deem!
“How so?” thou sayst—'Tis that, perfidious grown,
Thou'rt more seducing, but of less esteem.

If gouty pangs, or a rank goatish smell,
Did ever with poor mortal justly dwell;
Thy rival, Virro, to console thy care,
Hath got of each disease an ample share:
For, when in hot embrace the lovers burn,
She's choak'd with stench, and he with gout is torn.

Whence sprang that savage, that unfeeling mind?
Art thou some offspring of the lion kind,
On scorching Lybia's thirsty mountains born;
Or from the womb of barking Scylla torn?
That thus thou'rt deaf to all my urgent woes;
O, heart too harden'd, that no pity knows!