Saturday, March 31, 2012

"let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love"

















Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and count all the mumblings of sour age at a penny's fee. Suns set can rise again: we when once our brief light has set must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me of kisses a thousand, and then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then another thousand without resting, then a hundred. Then, when we have made many thousands, we will confuse the count lest we know the numbering, so that no wretch may be able to envy us through knowledge of our kisses' number.

Poem 5 from The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus


The Kiss, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892-93

No comments: