Profane her name I hold so dear?
Pshaw! you with any libels let
Your pot-house gossips cram your ear!"
Perhaps to this state of suspense and partial estrangement may be referable the verses about Lesbia's vow to burn the 'Annals' of Volusius, a wretched poet whom she had professed to favour, if Catullus would only return to her arms, and cease brandishing his iambic thunderbolts. The crisis at last has come when the idol has been shattered; but the votary cannot yet shake off the blind servitude which his better judgment repudiates. As yet he can comfort himself with those fallacious tokens of mutual love which appear in his ninety-second piece, and which may be given, for a change, from Swift's translation:—
To talk of me she never fails.
Now, hang me, but for all her art
I find that I have gained her heart.
My proof is this, I plainly see
The case is just the same with me;
I curse her every hour sincerely,
Yet hang me but I love her dearly!"
Unfortunately, the love has vitality and elements of steadfastness only on the one side. Repeated sins against it open wide the eyes of Catullus, till he is forced to own to himself that the sole link that is left between them is rather a passion of wild desire than the purer and tenderer flame, which burned for her
