Though care, that unto me sore grief hath brought,
Calls me from converse with the sacred Nine,
Nor can my heart incline
To bring to any end inspired thought;--
(For now the wave of the Lethaean lake,
How recent hath it bathed in Death's dark vale
A brother's feet so pale;
And I can only sorrow for his sake.
The Trojan land on the Rhoetean shore
Hath hidden him for ever from these eyes,--
And I with glad surprise,
And brother's love, shall welcome thee no more.
Loved more than life, dear brother! what can I
But love thee still, and mourn for thee full long
In a funereal song,
In secret to assuage my grief thereby?
As amid many boughs all leaf-array'd
The Danlian bird, the nightingale, out-poured,
When Itys she deplored,
Her mellow sorrows in the thickest shade:)
Yet, Ortalus, 'mid tears that flow so fast,
The work of your Battiades I send,
Lest you should deem, dear friend,
Your wishes to the winds are idly cast,
And from my mind escaped, all unaware,
As falls the fruit, love's furtive gift, unbid,
In virgin bosom hid,
When she, forgetful of its lying there,
Would suddenly arise, and run to greet
The coming of her mother, from her vest
And her now loosen'd breast,
The shameless apple rolls before her feet.
And she, poor maid! abashed, and in the hush
Of shame, before her mother cannot speak,
While all her virgin cheek
Betrays her secret in the conscious blush.
CURATE.--It is very tender--the last image is delicately beautiful. I
did not translate it.
GRATIAN.--Pretty as the passage of the maiden's disaster in dropping the
lover's gift--and that, too, be it observed, in the hurry of her
tenderness, which increases the beauty, or rather accomplishes it--yet
is it not abrupt in a piece where there is the expression of so much
grief? Catullus was an affectionate man, more especially affectionate
brother; on other occasions, if I remember rightly, he deplores this
brother's loss. Now, Master Curate, what do you offer us?
CURATE.--Not now a verse translation, but an observation on a little
piece of raillery, in which Catullus quizzes one Arrius for his
aspirating; and, I mean it not as a pun, exasperating, though it should
seem that his friends were not a little exasperated at his bad
pronunciation. Do we inherit from the Romans this, our (Cockneyism, I
was going to say, but it is too general to allow of such a limit,)
vulgarity of speech? "Where," says Catullus, "Arrius meant to say
commoda, he uttered it as c_h_ommoda, and _h_insidias for insidias, and
never thought he spoke remarkably well unless he laid great stress upon
the aspirate, calling it with emphasis _h_insidias. I believe his
mother, his uncle, his maternal grandfather and grandmother all spoke in
the same way. When the man went into Syria, all ears had a little rest,
and heard those words pronounced without this emphatic aspirate, and
began to entertain no fears respecting the use of the words; when on a
sudden they hear--that after Arrius had gone thither, the Ionian seas
were no longer Ionian, but Hionian." This is curious. As the Romans had
possession here more than four hundred years, did they leave us this
legacy?
AQUILIUS--I will, then, give you versions of the two which immediately
follow.