The Poems and Fragments of Catullus Part 21

_Truth._ Virgins, O Virgins, to sweet Hymen yield, For as a lone vine in a naked field Never extols her branches, never bears Ripe grapes, but with a headlong heaviness wears Her tender body, and her highest sprout Is quickly levell'd with her fading root; By whom no husbandmen, no youths will dwell; But if by fortune she be married well, To the elm her husband, many husbandmen And many youths inhabit by her then; So whilst a virgin doth untouch'd abide, All unmanur'd she grows old with her pride; But when to equal wedlock, in fit time, Her fortune and endeavour lets her climb, Dear to her love and parents she is held.

Virgins, O Virgins, to sweet Hymen yield.

BEN JONSON, _The Barriers_.

LXIII.

In the metre of this poem Catullus observes the following general type--

--' --' -- uu- u- -u -- uu- uuu u- (so Heyse.) uu uu

Except in 18, _Hilarate aere citatis erroribus animum_, 53, _Et earum omnia adirem furibunda latibula_, where the Ionic a minore, which seems to have been the original basis of the rhythm, is preserved intact in the former half of the line. I have followed Catullus generally with exactness, but with an occasional resolution of one long into two short syllables, where it has not been introduced by the poet, _e.g._ in 31, 34, 49, 64, 65, 68, 79. In v. 10 I have ventured on a license which Catullus does not admit, but which is, I think, justified by other and earlier specimens of the metre, an anaclasis of the original Ionic a minore at the end of the line. In reading this poem it should never be forgotten that there is a pause in the middle of each line, which practically divides it into two halves. Tennyson, in his _Boadicea_, written on the model of the _Attis_, divides each verse similarly in the middle; but in the first half he has changed the rhythm of Catullus to a trochaic rhythm, in the second, while producing much of the effect of the _Attis_ by the acc.u.mulation of short syllables at the end of the line, he has not bound himself to the same strictly defined feet as Catullus, and generally has preferred to take from the somewhat emasculate character of the verse by adding an unaccented syllable at the close.

LXIII.

8 _Taborine_

Beat loud the tabourines, let the trumpets blow.

_Troilus and Cressida_, Act iv. sc. 5.

16 _Aby_

abide; as, I think, in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, vi. 2, 19.

But he was fierce and whot, Ne time would give, nor any termes aby.

Below, lxiv. 297, I have used it in its more common meaning of atoning for, _Faerie Queene_, iv. 1, 53.

Yet thou, false Squire, his fault shalt deare aby, And with thy punishment his penance shalt supply.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, iii. 2.

Lest to thy peril thou aby it dear.

24 _Ululation._

There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star.

LONGFELLOW'S _Dante Inf_. iii. 22.

41 _When he smote the shadowy twilight with his healthy team sublime._

Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes, And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.

TENNYSON, _t.i.thonus_.

83 _On a nervy neck._

Four maned lions hale The sluggish wheels; solemn their toothed maws, Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails Covering their tawny brushes.

KEATS, _Endymion_, II. ad fin.

LXIV. 160.

_Yet to your household thou, your kindred palaces olden._

I have combined _thou_ with _your_ purposely, to suggest the idea conveyed in _uestras_ as opposed to _potuisti_, the family abode as opposed to the individual Theseus.

183 _Flexibly fleeting_

bent as they move rapidly through the water.

186 _No glimmer of hope_

from Heyse,

Keinerlei Flucht, kein Schimmer der Hoffnung, stumm liegt Alles.

258 _Gordian._

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue.

KEATS, _Lamia_, Part I.

308 _Wreaths sat on each h.o.a.r crown, whose snows flush' d rosy beneath them._

I have attempted here to give what I conceive Catullus may have meant to convey by the remarkable collocation _At roseo niueae residebant uertice uittae_. Properly, the wreaths are rosy, the locks snow-white; but the colour of the wreaths is so blent with the colour of the locks that each is lost in the other, and an inversion of epithets becomes possible.

_So, in fury of heart, shall death's stern reaper, Achilles._

A verse seems to have been lost here, which I have thus supplied.

LXVIII. 149.

_So, it is all I can, take, Allius, answer, a little Verse, to requite thy much friends.h.i.+p, a contrary boon_.

These little rites, a stone, a verse, receive, 'Tis all a father, all a friend can give.

POPE, _Epitaph on the children of Lord Digby._

LXIX. 4.

_Clarity_