C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Last Word to Lesbia
By Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84c. 54 B.C.)
O F
Who to Ind’s farthest shore with me would roam,
Where the far-sounding Orient billows beat
Their fury into foam;
The Sacian’s or the quivered Parthian’s land,
Or where seven-mantled Nile’s swoll’n waters dye
The sea with yellow sand;
Great Cæsar’s trophied fields, the Gallic Rhine,
The paint-smeared Briton race, grim-visaged crew,
Placed by earth’s limit line;
To dare whate’er the eternal gods decree—
These few unwelcome words to her convey
Who once was all to me.
Still clasp her hundred slaves to passion’s thrall,
Still truly love not one, but ever drain
The life-blood of them all.
For by her faithlessness ’tis blighted now,
Like flow’ret on the verge of grassy mead
Crushed by the passing plow.