1, 2a, 2b, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

10, 11, 12, 13, 14a, 14b, 15, 16, 17

Poem 5:  Let's live and love

Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum seueriorum

omnes unius aestimemus assis!

soles occidere et redire possunt:

nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda.

da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.

dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,

conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,

cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Let’s live and love, my Lesbia,

and value all the chatterings

of too-stern old men at one copper!

Suns can set and they can return:

when once our brief light sets,                                         5

one eternal night must be slept.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred;

then one more thousand, then a second hundred;

then yet another thousand, then a hundred.

Then when we’ve fashioned many thousands,              10

we’ll fiddle the figures lest we know

or any villain can beguile us

by knowing the great sum of our kisses.

Notes
The concern expressed in line 13 of people counting Catullus’ and Lesbia’s kisses (and similar in line 11 of Poem 7) is based on the superstition that exact knowledge of someone’s behaviour can be used by malicious people to cast evil spells.

Although the poem’s overall English metrical scheme is (flexible) iambic tetrameters, line 5 has been cut to a trimeter to emphasise the briefness of life and lines 7-9 expanded to pentameters to emphasise, by contrast, the innumerable kisses. The Latin metre is hendecasyllables, Catullus' second favourite verse form (after elegiac couplets).