Nature

Carmen IV (Cornish)

by Gaius Valerius Catullus c. 84 – c. 54 BC

Translated by F. W. Cornish (Loeb, 1913) · From The Poems of Catullus (Loeb, 1913)

Nature

The pinnace you see, my friends, says that she was once the fleetest of ships, and that there was never any timber afloat whose speed she was not able to pass, whether she would fly with oar -blades or with canvas. And this (says she) the shore of the blustering Adriatic does not deny, nor the Cyclad isles and famous Rhodes and the wild Thracian Propontis, nor the gloomy gulf of Pontus, where she who was afterwards a pinnace was formerly a leafy forest: for on the height of Cytorus she often rustled with talking leaves. Pontic Amastris and Cytorus green with box, my galley says that all this was and is well known to thee; she says that from her earliest birthtime she stood on thy summit, in thy waters first dipped her blades, and thence over so many riotous seas brought her owner, whether the breeze from left or right invited, or Jove came down astern on both sheets at once; and that no vows to the gods of the shore were made by her all the time she was sailing from the furthest sea even to this limpid lake.

But these things are past and gone; now she rests in old age and retired leisure, and dedicates herself to thee, twin Castor, and to thee, Castor's twin.

This translation is printed as prose in its source edition.

MLA

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. “Carmen IV (Cornish).” Translated by F. W. Cornish. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/catullus/116/.

Chicago

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. “Carmen IV (Cornish).” Translated by F. W. Cornish. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/catullus/116/.

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