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Whose cause and cure thou never hopest to find;
But still uncertain, with thyself at strife,
Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life.

Oh, if the foolish race of man, who find
A weight of cares still pressing on their mind,
Could find as well the cause of this unrest,
And all this burden lodged within the breast;
Sure they would change their course, nor live as now,
Uncertain what to wish, or what to vow.

Uneasy both in country and in town,

They search a place to lay their burden down...
Thus every man o'erworks his weary will,

To shun himself, and to shake off his ill;

The shaking fit returns, and hangs upon him still.
No prospect of repose, nor hope of ease;

The wretch is ignorant of his disease;
Which known would all his fruitless trouble spare;
For he would know the world not worth his care;
Then would he search more deeply for the cause,
And study Nature well, and Nature's laws;
For in this moment lies not the debate,
But on our future, fixed, eternal state;

That never changing state, which all must keep,
Whom death has doomed to everlasting sleep.

Why are we then so fond of mortal life,
Beset with dangers, and maintained with strife?
A life, which all our care can never save;
One fate attends us, and one common grave.

Besides, we tread but a perpetual round;

We ne'er strike out, but beat the former ground,

And the same mawkish joys in the same track are found.

For still we think an absent blessing best,

Which cloys, and is no blessing when possessed:

A new arising wish expels it from the breast.

The feverish thirst of life increases still;

We call for more and more, and never have our fill;

Yet know not what to-morrow we shall try,

What dregs of life in the last draught may lie:

Nor, by the longest life we can attain,

One moment from the length of death we gain;

For all behind belongs to his eternal reign.

When once the Fates have cut the mortal thread,
The man as much to all intents is dead,
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago.

THE SPINNING OF THE FATES.

BY CATULLUS.

(Translated by Sir Richard F. Burton.)

[CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS, a leading Roman poet, was born at Verona, B.C. 87; died about B.C. 47. He was a wealthy and pleasure-loving gentleman, the friend of Cicero and other chief men of his time. He wrote lyrics, elegies, odes, etc.]

In the mean time, with shaking bodies and infirm gesture, the Parcæ began to intone their veridical chant. Their trembling frames were enwrapped around with white garments, encircled with a purple border at their heels; snowy fillets bound each aged brow, and their hands pursued their never-ending toil, as of custom. The left hand bore the distaff enwrapped in soft wool; the right hand, lightly withdrawing the threads with upturned fingers, did shape them, then twisting them with the prone thumb it turned the balanced spindle with well-polished whirl. And then with a pluck of their tooth the work was always made even, and the bitten wool shreds adhered to their dried lips, which shreds at first had stood out from the fine thread. And in front of their feet wicker baskets of osier twigs took charge of the soft white woolly fleece. These, with clear-sounding voice, as they combed out the wool, outpoured fates of such kind in sacred song, in song which none age yet to come could tax with untruth.

"O with great virtues thine exceeding honor augmenting, stay of Emathia-land, most famous in thine issue, receive what the sisters make known to thee on this gladsome day, a weird veridical! But ye whom the fates do follow: Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"Now Hesperus shall come unto thee bearing what is longed for by bridegrooms; with that fortunate star shall thy bride come, who ensteeps thy soul with the sway of softening love, and prepares with thee to conjoin in languorous slumber, making her smooth arms thy pillow round 'neath thy sinewy neck. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"No house ever yet inclosed such loves, no love bound lovers with such pact, as abideth with Thetis, as is the concord of Peleus. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

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"To ye shall Achilles be born, a stranger to fear, to his foemen not by his back, but by his broad breast known, who, ofttimes the victor in the uncertain struggle of the foot race, shall outrun the fire-fleet footsteps of the speedy doe. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"None in war with him may compare as a hero, when the Phrygian streams shall trickle with Trojan blood; and when besieging the walls of Troy with a long-drawn-out warfare, perjured Pelops' third heir shall lay that city waste. ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

Haste

"His glorious acts and illustrious deeds often shall mothers attest o'er funeral rites of their sons, when the white locks from their heads are unloosed amid ashes, and they bruise their discolored breasts with feeble fists. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"For as the husbandman bestrewing the dense wheat ears mows the harvest yellowed 'neath ardent sun, so shall he cast prostrate the corpses of Troy's sons with grim swords. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"His great valor shall be attested by Scamander's wave, which ever pours itself into the swift Hellespont, narrowing whose course with slaughtered heaps of corpses, he shall make tepid its deep stream by mingling warm blood with the water. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"And she a witness in fine shall be the captive maid handed to death, when the heaped-up tomb of earth built in lofty mound shall receive the snowy limbs of the stricken virgin. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"For instant fortune shall give the means to the war-worn Greeks to break Neptune's stone bonds of the Dardanian city, the tall tomb shall be made dank with Polyxena's blood, who as the victim succumbing 'neath two-edged sword, with yielding hams shall fall forward a headless corpse. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"Wherefore haste ye to conjoin in the longed-for delights of your love. Bridegroom, thy goddess receive in felicitous compact; let the bride be given to her eager husband. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.

"Nor shall the nurse at orient light returning, with yestere'en's thread succeed in circling her neck. [Haste ye, a weaying the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.] Nor need her solicitous mother fear sad discord shall cause a parted bed for her

VOL. V. -19

daughter, nor need she cease to hope for dear grandchildren. Haste ye, a weaving the woof, O hasten, ye spindles.'

With such soothsaying songs of yore did the Parcæ chant from divine breast the felicitous fate of Peleus. For of aforetime the heaven dwellers were wont to visit the chaste homes of heroes, and to show themselves in mortal assembly, ere yet their worship was scorned. Often the father of the gods, a resting in his glorious temple, when on the festal days his annual rites appeared, gazed on an hundred bulls strewn prone on the earth. Often wandering Liber on topmost summit of Parnassus led his yelling Thyiads with loosely tossed locks. When the Delphians tumultuously trooping from the whole of their city joyously acclaimed the god with smoking altars. Often in lethal strife of war Mavors, or swift Triton's queen, or the Rhamnusian virgin, in person did exhort armed bodies of men. But after the earth was infected with heinous crime, and each one banished justice from their grasping mind, and brothers steeped their hands in fraternal blood, the son ceased grieving o'er departed parents, the sire craved for the funeral rites of his firstborn that freely he might take of the flower of unwedded stepdame, the unholy mother, lying under her unknowing son, did not fear to sully her household gods with dishonor everything licit and lawless commingled with mad infamy turned away from us the just-seeing mind of the gods. Wherefore nor do they deign to appear at such like assemblies, nor will they permit themselves to be met in the daylight.

EPITHALAMIUM.

BY CATULLUS.

(Translated by John Hookham Frere.)

You that from the mother's side
Lead the lingering, blushing bride,
Fair Urania's son

Leave awhile the lonely mount,
The haunted grove and holy fount
Of chilling Helicon.

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