By ways remote and distant waters sped,

have you come home to your own houseyour harmonious brothers, and old mother?You’re back. O happy news for me!I’ll see you safe and sound and listento your tales of Spanish places that you’ve done,and tribes, as is your custom, andhang about your neck, and kissyour lovely mouth and eyes.O who of all men is happierthan…

and pokes with the tip of her finger, provokingcounterattacks with your mordant beak,whenever my luminous love desiressomething or other, innocuous fun,a bit of escape, I suppose, from her pain,a moment of peace from her turbulent passion,I wish I could play like she does with youand lighten the cares of my sorrowful soul.It thrills me as…

To you, Cornelius: since you were accustomedto consider my trifles worth somethingeven then, when you alone of Italiansdared to explain all the ages, in three learnedworks, by Jupiter, and with the greatest labour.Then take this little book for your own: whateverit is, and is worth: virgin Muse, patroness,let it last, for more lives than one.

Who, Lesbia, sits before thy face,Who listens and who looks on thee;Thee smiling soft. Yet this delightDoth all my sense consign to death;For when thou dawnest on my sight,Ah, wretched! flits my labouring breath.My tongue is palsied. Subtly hidFire creeps me through from limb to limb:My loud ears tingle all unbid:Twin clouds of night mine…

when your laughter’s radiance falls on him there,trembling before you;the song draws the soul from my body, itshakes me with wanting and fear, because when Isee you I arch to the stars and dissolving Ifade into darkness,and now, like a mawkish boy, I stammer,pale flame veins my flesh and my ears ringcrazy in chimes and…

and the great oceans Neptune circles,how delightedly, how gladly, I return,hardly believing myself I’ve safely leftThynia and those Black Sea shores behind.What is better than to be free from carewhen the mind throws off its load and, at last,from foreign journeys, we reach our own home,sink back to rest on the one bed we longed…

with exquisite music, voices,don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,work gone wrong, your plansall proving deceptive–don’t mourn them uselessly:as one long prepared, and full of courage,say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t sayit was a dream, your ears deceived you:don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.As one…

to a little whore I immediately saw,not very inelegant, not unattractive,who, when we came there, met uswith varied chatter, including, how mightBithynia stand now, what’s it like, and wheremight the benefit have been to me in cash.I told her what’s true, nothing at all,while neither the praetors nor their aides,return any the richer, especially sinceour…

where the Eastern waves strike the shorewith deep resonance,or among the Hyrcanians and supple Arabs,or Sacians and Parthian bowmen,or where the seven-mouthed Nilecolours the waters,or whether he’ll climb the high Alps,viewing great Caesar’s monuments,the waters of Gallic Rhine,and the furthest fierce Britons,whatever the will of the heavensbrings, ready now for anything,tell my girl this in…

my girl’s sparrow is dead,sparrow, the girl’s delight,whom she loved more than her eyes.For he was sweet as honey, and knew heras well as the girl her own mother,he never moved from her lap,but, hopping about here and there,chirped to his mistress alone.Now he goes down the shadowy roadfrom which they say no one returns.Now…

outermost India booms the eastern ocean’swonderful thunder;whether he stops with Arabs or Hyrcani,Parthian bowmen or nomadic Sagae;or goes to Egypt, which the Nile so richlydyes, overflowing;even if he should scale the lofty Alps, orsummon to mind the mightiness of Caesarviewing the Gallic Rhine, the dreadful Britonsat the world’s far end–you’re both prepared to share in…

so, if you’ve ever had a desire in your mindyou’ve pursued chastely and purely,keep this boy of mine modestly safe,I don’t speak to the masses – nothing to fearfrom those who pass to and fro in the streetsoccupied with their business –truly the fear’s of you and your cockdangerous to both good and bad boys.Shake…

As many as the grains of Libyan sandthat lie between hot Jupiter’s oracle,at Ammon, in resin-producing Cyrene,and old Battiades sacred tomb:or as many as the stars, when night is still,gazing down on secret human desires:as many of your kisses kissedare enough, and more, for mad Catullus,as can’t be counted by spiesnor an evil tongue bewitch…

that loosed her belt, too long tied.

to show this final honour to the dead,and speak (to what purpose?) to your silent ashes,since now fate takes you, even you, from me.Oh, Brother, ripped away from me so cruelly,now at least take these last offerings, blessedby the tradition of our parents, gifts to the dead.Accept, by custom, what a brother’s tears drown,and, for…

Now, hang me, but for all her art,I find that I have gained her heart.My proof is this: I plainly seeThe case is just the same with me;I curse her every hour sincerely,Yet, hang me, but I love her dearly.

with exquisite music, voices,don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,work gone wrong, your plansall proving deceptive–don’t mourn them uselessly:as one long prepared, and full of courage,say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t sayit was a dream, your ears deceived you:don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.As one…

STRANGER, the bark you see before you saysThat in old times and in her early daysShe was a lively vessel that could makeThe quickest voyages, and overtakeAll her competitors with sail or oar;And she defies the rude Illyrian shore,And Rhodes with her proud harbor, and the seasThat intersect the scattered Cyclades,And the Propontic and the…