34. But the pain of parting was very insignificant in comparison with the overwhelming joy of home-coming. The exquisite grace of the two sparrow-songs of Catullus (cc. 2, 3) is matched by the most perfect delight that breathes through the pair of poems (cc. 46, 31) that mark the beginning and the end of his homeward voyage. They stand supreme among the poems of home that have come down to us from antiquity, thrilling and quivering with purest and most childlike passion. With this pair of poems probably belongs a third (c. 4), which followed speedily upon the two others.
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Catullus. Catullus. E. T. Merrill. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1893.
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