No More Learning

Give me, then, a thousand kisses,
Twice ten thousand more bestow,
Till the sum of boundless blisses
Neither we nor envy know.

J. LANGHORNE.

I append the beginning of Blacklock's version:

THOUGH sour-loquacious Age reprove,
Let _us_, my Lesbia, live for love.
For when the short-lived suns decline
They but retire more bright to shine:
But we, when fleeting life is o'er
And light and love can bless no more,
Are ravished from each dear delight
To sleep one long eternal night.

T. BLACKLOCK.


_86 b_

KISS me, sweet: the wary lover
Can your favours keep, and cover,
When the common courting jay
All your bounties will betray.
Kiss again! no creature comes;
Kiss, and score up wealthy sums
On my lips, thus hardly sundered,
While you breathe. First give a hundred,
Then a thousand, then another
Hundred, then unto the tother
Add a thousand and so more,
Till you equal with the store
All the grass that Rumney yields,
Or the sands in Chelsea fields,
Or the drops in silver Thames,
Or the stars that gild his streams
In the silent summer nights
When Youth plies its stolen delights:
That the curious may not know
How to tell 'em as they flow,
And the envious, when they find
What their number is, be pined.

BEN JONSON.


_92_

CATULLUS, let the wanton go:
No longer play the fool, but deem
For ever lost what thou must know
Is fled for ever like a dream!

O life was once a heaven to thee!
To haunt her steps was rapture then--
That woman loved as loved shall be
No woman ever on earth again.
Then didst thou freely taste the bliss,
On which empassioned lovers feed:
When she repaid thee kiss for kiss,
O, life was then a heaven indeed!

'Tis past: forget as she forgets:
Lament no more, but let her go:
Tear from thy heart its mad regrets,
And into very marble grow!

Girl, fare thee well. Catullus ne'er
Will sue where love is met with scorn:
But, false one, thou with none to care
For thee, shalt pine through days forlorn.

Think, think, how drear thy life will be!
Who'll woo thee now? who praise thy charms?
Who now will be all in all to thee
And live but in thy loving arms?

Ay, who will give thee kiss for kiss,
Whose lip wilt thou in rapture bite?
But thou, Catullus, think of this
And spurn her in thine own despite.

THEODORE MARTIN.


_97_

Of this, one of the most famous and effective of Catullus's poems, I
offer two versions. The first (an adaptation) is by 'knowing Walsh', the
friend of Pope, pronounced by Dryden to be 'the first critic in the
nation': the second is by Prof. Slater of Cardiff:

IS there a pious pleasure that proceeds
From contemplation of our virtuous deeds?
That all mean sordid action we despise,
And scorn to gain a throne by cheats and lies?
Thyrsis, thou hast sure blessings laid in store
From thy just dealing in this curst amour.