Max Langenkamp
Auckland Grammar School
Translation (The Currency of Love & Ode to Farewell) from Latin into English of Poem 5 & Poem 101 by Catallus
Translation (The Currency of Love & Ode to Farewell) from Latin into English of Poem 5 & Poem 101 by Catallus
The Currency of Love
Let us live, my sweetest Lesbia, and let us love. We shall not deign to even consider all the thoughts of the other jealous rabble. Suns are able to rise and return, but we, with our brief but brilliant light, can set but once; only to descend into an eternal night. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, give me another thousand, then a second hundred; give me a final thousand, and then a final hundred. Then, when we have counted so many thousands, we shall make out as though the wealth of our love is bankrupt, so that no one may even conceive of our fortune-the extent to which it rises- and surrender to their sheer jealousy. Ode to Farewell I have come, after journeying through a multitude of seas and the seven nations, for this dolorous litany and to present to you this ultimate salute from the living (to the dead). I have also come to speak, albeit in vain, to your voiceless ashes. Since Destiny has stolen your very being from me; I must lament _– for it is you, my poor brother, whom Fate has taken from me so unfairly. While we wait to be reunited, accept this oblation, which has been handed down in accordance with the venerable praxis of our ancestor, streaming greatly with a lonely brother’s tears. Forever, my brother, hail and farewell |
5 – Catullus
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis! soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda. da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus inuidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum. 101 – Catullus Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, ut te postremo donarem munere mortis et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem. Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum. Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi, nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias, accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. |