This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if such were lawful, to surpass the
gods, who sitting across from you again and again gazes on you, and listens to
you sweetly laughting, which snatchs away from sombre me my every sense: for the
instant I glance on you, Lesbia, nothing is left to me [of voice], but my tongue
is numbed, a keen-edged flame spreads through my limbs, with sound self-caused
my twin ears sing, and my eyes are enwrapped with night. Leisure, Catullus, to
you is hurtful: in leisure beyond measure do you exult and pass your life.
Leisure first ruined rulers and prosperous cities.
Catullus. The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers. London. Smithers. 1894.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.