TO LESBIA, (OF LESBOS-CLODIA?)

Love we (my Lesbia!) and live we our day,

While all stern sayings crabbed sages say,

At one doit’s value let us price and prize!

The Suns can westward sink again to rise

But we, extinguished once our tiny light,

Perforce shall slumber through one lasting night!

Kiss me a thousand times, then hundred more,

Then thousand others, then a new five-score,

Still other thousand other hundred store.

Last when the sums to many thousands grow,

The tale let’s trouble till no more we know,

Nor envious wight despiteful shall misween us

Knowing how many kisses have been kissed between us.

Carmina. C. Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers (Translator), Sir Richard Francis Burton (Translator). London. 1894.

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Carmina (English) (Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Burton, Sir Richard Francis, translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894.)

Translations (1)

Carmina Perseus (Catullus, Gaius Valerius. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Smithers, Leonard Charles, prose translator. London, Printed for the Translators, 1894. (Modernized by Perseus.)) — 5 focus

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and count all the mumblings of sour age at a penny’s fee. Suns can set and rise again:

we when once our brief light has set must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then another thousand without resting, then a hundred.

Then, when we have made many thousands, we will confuse the count lest we know the numbering, so that no one can cast an evil eye on us through knowing the number of our kisses.

C. Valerius Catullus Carmina 5

Leonard C. Smithers (Translator), Sir Richard Francis Burton (Translator)

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TO LESBIA, (OF LESBOS-CLODIA?)

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