Carmen LVIII: On Lesbia Who Ended Badly
Caelius! That Lesbia of ours, that Lesbia,That only Lesbia by Catullus loved,Than self, far fondlier, than all his friends,She now where four roads fork, and wind the wyndsHusks the high-minded scions Remus-sprung.
About this text
Carmen LVIII: On Lesbia Who Ended Badly is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Carmina, Project Gutenberg ebook #20732, the Richard Burton translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Catullus, Carmen LVIII: On Lesbia Who Ended Badly, in The Carmina (1894), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #20732, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/catullus-carmina/carmen-lviii-on-lesbia-who-ended-badly.html, id L13841.
Form and metre
Carmen LVIII: On Lesbia Who Ended Badly is 5 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 --AA- lesbia · loved · friendsA · wyndsA · sprung
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Caelius! That Lesbia of ours, that Lesbia, | 10 | ······/··· |
| That only Lesbia by Catullus loved, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Than self, far fondlier, than all his friends, | 9 | ········· |
| She now where four roads fork, and wind the wynds | 10 | ·········· |
| Husks the high-minded scions Remus-sprung. | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.