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Enoch Soames

Ave Atque Vale

Ave Atque Vale

A translation from Catullus, Carmen CI.

By ways remote and distant waters sped,
Brother, to thy sad grave-side am I come,
That I may give the last gifts to the dead,
And vainly parley with thine ashes dumb:
Since she who now bestows and now denies
Hath taken thee, hapless brother, from mine eyes.
But lo! these gifts, the heirlooms of past years,
Are made sad things to grace thy coffin shell,
Take them, all drenchèd with a brother’s tears,
And, brother, for all time, hail and farewell!

¶ 1896. First published in The Savoy, No.7, November 1896. Beardsley’s verses were written when he was already gravely ill, and follow closely a prose translation made by Smithers and the polymath Sir Richard Burton for their edition of the Carmina of Catullus, one of Smithers’s first, and most elegant, publications.