My Lesbia, let us live and love
And not care tuppence for old men
Who sermonise and disapprove.
Suns when they sink can rise again,
But we, when our brief light has shone,
Must sleep the long night on and on.
Kiss me: a thousand kisses, then
A hundred more, and now a second
Thousand and hundred, and now still
Hundreds and thousands more, until
The thousand thousands can’t be reckoned
And we’ve lost track of the amount
And nobody can work us ill
With the evil eye by keeping count.
(Catullus, Poems, in J. Michie (trans.) (1998) Ware: Wordsworth Editions
And not care tuppence for old men
Who sermonise and disapprove.
Suns when they sink can rise again,
But we, when our brief light has shone,
Must sleep the long night on and on.
Kiss me: a thousand kisses, then
A hundred more, and now a second
Thousand and hundred, and now still
Hundreds and thousands more, until
The thousand thousands can’t be reckoned
And we’ve lost track of the amount
And nobody can work us ill
With the evil eye by keeping count.
(Catullus, Poems, in J. Michie (trans.) (1998) Ware: Wordsworth Editions
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