To Lesbia‡

0 my Lesbia  let us live for loving,

Suns can set and return to light the morrow,

We when once has sunk down the brief light of living

One long night must be slept and slept for ever.

Give me kisses a thousand, then a hundred,

One more thousand again, again a hundred,

Many thousands of kisses, crowding hundreds —

Kisses numberless like to sands on sea-shore,

Burning Libya's sands in far Cyrene.

Then the thousands confound and mix the hundred

Lest some envious Fate or eye discover

The reckoning of our love and kisses.

         ‡Catullus

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