Carmen XLVI: His Adieux to Bithynia
Now Spring his cooly mildness brings us back,Now th' equinoctial heaven's rage and wrackHushes at hest of Zephyr's bonny breeze.Far left (Catullus!) be the Phrygian leasAnd summery Nicaea's fertile downs:Fly we to Asia's fame-illumined towns.Now lust my fluttering thoughts for wayfare long,Now my glad eager feet grow steady, strong.O fare ye well, my comrades, pleasant throng,Ye who together far from homesteads flying,By many various ways come homewards hieing.
Words in this poem
- cooly n.
- An East Indian porter or carrier; a laborer transported from the East Indies, China, or Japan, for service in some other country. [Hind. k a laborer, porter: cf. Turk. k, ky, slave.]
- wrack n.
- Wreck; ruin; destruction. [OE. wrak wreck. See Wreck.]
- hest n.
- Command; precept; injunction. See Behest. [AS. hs, fr. h to call, bid. See Hight, and cf. Behest.]
- bonny a.
- Handsome; beautiful; pretty; attractively lively and graceful. [OE. boni, prob. fr. F. bon, fem. bonne, good, fr. L. bonus good. See Bounty, and cf. Bonus, Boon.]
- summery a.
- Of or pertaining to summer; like summer; as, a summery day.
- lust v. i.
- To list; to like. [AS. lystan. See Lust, n., and cf. List to choose.]
- wayfare v. i.
- To journey; to travel; to go to and fro. [Way + fare to go.]
- homewards adv.
- Toward home; in the direction of one's house, town, or country. [AS. hamweard.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Carmen XLVI: His Adieux to Bithynia 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 XLVI: His Adieux to Bithynia, in The Carmina (1894), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #20732, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/catullus-carmina/carmen-xlvi-his-adieux-to-bithynia.html, id L13829.
Form and metre
Carmen XLVI: His Adieux to Bithynia is 11 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 73% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 18% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 AABBCCDDDEE backA · wrackA · breezeB · leasB · downsC · townsC · longD · strongD · throngD · flyingE · hieingE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Now Spring his cooly mildness brings us back, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Now th' equinoctial heaven's rage and wrack | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Hushes at hest of Zephyr's bonny breeze. | 10 | /˘···/˘/˘· |
| Far left (Catullus!) be the Phrygian leas | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And summery Nicaea's fertile downs: | 9 | ·/˘˘··˘/· |
| Fly we to Asia's fame-illumined towns. | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘· |
| Now lust my fluttering thoughts for wayfare long, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Now my glad eager feet grow steady, strong. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| O fare ye well, my comrades, pleasant throng, | 10 | ·····/·/˘· |
| Ye who together far from homesteads flying, | 11 | ··˘/˘··/·/˘ |
| By many various ways come homewards hieing. | 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.