10
Rhine Gallic, horrid Ocean and remote
Britons low-dwelling;
All these (whatever shall the will design
Of Heaven-homed Gods) Oh ye prepared to tempt;
Announce your briefest to that damsel mine 15
In words unkempt:--
Live she and love she wenchers several,
Embrace three hundred wi' the like requitals,
None truly loving and withal of all
Bursting the vitals: 20
My love regard she not, my love of yore,
Which fell through fault of her, as falls the fair
Last meadow-floret whenas passed it o'er
Touch of the share.

Furius and Aurelius, comrades of Catullus, whether he penetrate to furthest
Ind where the strand is lashed by the far-echoing Eoan surge, or whether
'midst the Hyrcans or soft Arabs, or whether the Sacians or quiver-bearing
Parthians, or where the seven-mouthed Nile encolours the sea, or whether he
traverse the lofty Alps, gazing at the monuments of mighty Caesar, the
gallic Rhine, the dismal and remotest Britons, all these, whatever the
Heavens' Will may bear, prepared at once to attempt,--bear ye to my girl
this brief message of no fair speech. May she live and flourish with her
swivers, of whom may she hold at once embraced the full three hundred,
loving not one in real truth, but bursting again and again the flanks of
all: nor may she look upon my love as before, she whose own guile slew it,
e'en as a flower on the greensward's verge, after the touch of the passing
plough.

XII.

Marrucine Asini, manu sinistra
Non belle uteris in ioco atque vino:
Tollis lintea neglegentiorum.
Hoc salsum esse putas? fugit te, inepte:
Quamvis sordida res et invenustast. 5
Non credis mihi? crede Polioni
Fratri, qui tua furta vel talento
Mutari velit: est enim leporum
Disertus puer ac facetiarum.
Quare aut hendecasyllabos trecentos 10
Expecta aut mihi linteum remitte,
Quod me non movet aestimatione,
Verumst mnemosynum mei sodalis.
Nam sudaria Saetaba ex Hibereis
Miserunt mihi muneri Fabullus 15
Et Veranius: haec amem necessest
Vt Veraniolum meum et Fabullum.

XII.

TO M. ASINIUS WHO STOLE NAPERY.

Marrucinus Asinius! ill thou usest
That hand sinistral in thy wit and wine
Filching the napkins of more heedless