I saw you, in my dreams, mea vita, shipwrecked, striking out, with weary hands, at Ionian waters, confessing the many ways you lied to me, unable to lift your head, hair heavy with brine, like Helle, whom once the golden ram carried on his soft back, driven through the dark waves. How frightened . . .
Constancy and Inconstancy
Unique woman, born to beauty, you, the object of my pain, since fate excludes me from your saying: ‘Come, often’: your form will be made most famous by my books: with your permission, Calvus: and Catullus, peace to you, with yours. The aged soldier sleeps by his grounded weapons; ancient oxen . . .
Reconciliation
Agamemnon did not joy like this over his triumph at Troy, when Laomedon’s great wealth went down to ruin: Ulysses was no happier, when, his wanderings done, he touched the shore of his beloved Ithaca: nor Electra, on finding Orestes safe, when she’d cried, as a sister, clasping what she thought his . . .
He wishes for his funeral
When death closes my eyes at last, then, hear what shall serve as my funeral. No long spread-out procession of images for me: no empty trumpeting to wail my end. Don’t smooth out a bed there on ivory posts for me then, no corpse on a couch, pressing down mounds of Attalic cloth of gold. Forget the . . .
A portrait of Amor
Whoever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don’t you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense, and that great good is lost in trivial cares. Also, with meaning, he added the wings of the wind, and made the god hover in the human heart: true, since . . .