Carmen V — Vivamus, mea Lesbia
Carmen V — Vivamus, mea Lesbia
Catullus
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
And all the talk of crabbed old men
Let us value at a single farthing.
Suns can set and rise again;
For us, when once our brief light has set,
Remains the sleep of one unbroken night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then yet another thousand, then a hundred.
Then, when we have made up many thousands,
We will make confusion of the counting,
That we may not know the number,
Nor any malicious person bewitch us,
When he knows that the kisses were so many.
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c. 60 BC. Translation by Richard Francis Burton, 1894. · Translated by Richard Francis Burton
