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O mourn, you Loves and Cupids, and all men of gracious mind. Dead is the sparrow
of my girl, sparrow, darling of my girl, which she loved more than her eyes; for
it was sweet as honey, and its mistress knew it as well as a girl knows her own
mother. Nor did it move from her lap, but hopping round first one side then the
other, to its mistress alone it continually chirped. Now it fares along that
path of shadows from where nothing may ever return. May evil befall you, savage
glooms of Orcus, which swallow up all things of fairness: which have snatched
away from me the comely sparrow. O wretched deed! O hapless sparrow! Now on your
account my girl's sweet eyes, swollen, redden with tear-drops.
Catullus. The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus. Leonard C. Smithers. London. Smithers. 1894.
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