XIV: Calvus, save that as eyes thou art beloved

Calvus, save that as eyes thou art beloved,
I could verily loathe thee for the morning's
Gift, Vatinius hardly more devoutly.

Slain with poetry! done to death with abjects!
O what syllable earn'd it, act allow'd it?
Gods, your malison on the sorry client
Sent that rascally rabble of malignants.

Yet, if, freely to guess, the gift recherche
Some grammarian, haply Sulla, sent thee;
I repine not; a dear delight, a triumph
This, thy drudgery thus to see rewarded.

Gods! an horrible and a deadly volume!

Sent so faithfully, friend, to thy Catullus,
Just to kill him upon a day, the festive,
Saturnalia, best of all the season.
Sure, a drollery not without requital.

For, come dawn, to the cases and the bookshops
I; there gather a Caesius and Aquinus,
With Suffenus, in every wretch a poison:
Such plague-prodigy thy remuneration!

Now good-morrow! away with evil omen
Whence ill destiny lamely bore ye, clumsy
Poet-rabble, an age's execration!