TO THE FREQUENTERS OF A LOW TAVERN.

Salacious Tavern and ye taverner-host,

From Pileate Brothers the ninth pile-post,

D'ye claim, you only of the mentule boast,

D'ye claim alone what damsels be the best

To swive: as he-goats holding all the rest? 5

Is't when like boobies sit ye incontinent here,

One or two hundred, deem ye that I fear

Two hundred ---- at one brunt?

Ay, think so, natheless all your tavern-front

With many a scorpion I will over-write. 10

For that my damsel, fro' my breast took flight,

By me so lovèd, as shall loved be none,

Wherefor so mighty wars were waged and won,

Does sit in public here. Ye fain, rich wights,

All woo her: thither too (the chief of slights!) 15

All pitiful knaves and by-street wenchers fare,

And thou, (than any worse), with hanging hair,

In coney-breeding Celtiberia bred,

Egnatius! bonnified by beard full-fed,

And teeth with Spanish urine polishèd. 20

Tavern of lust and you its tippling crowd, (at ninth pile sign-post from

the Cap-donned Brothers) think ye that ye alone have mentules, that 'tis

allowed to you alone to touzle whatever may be feminine, and to deem all

other men mere goats? But, because ye sit, a row of fools numbering one

hundred or haply two hundred, do ye think I dare not irrumate your entire

two hundred--loungers!--at once! Think it! but I'll scrawl all over the

front of your tavern with scorpion-words. For my girl, who has fled from my

embrace (she whom I loved as ne'er a maid shall be beloved--for whom I

fought fierce fights) has seated herself here. All ye, both honest men and

rich, and also, (O cursed shame) all ye paltry back-slum fornicators, are

making hot love to her; and thou above all, one of the hairy-visaged sons

of coney-caverned Celtiberia, Egnatius, whose quality is stamped by

dense-grown beard, and teeth with Spanish urine scrubbed.

The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus · 第 129 / 372 题