Carmen XXVIII: To Friends on Return from Travel
Followers of Piso, empty bandWith your light budgets packt to hand,Veranius best! Fabullus mine!What do ye? Bore ye enough, in fineOf frost and famine with yon sot?What loss or gain have haply gotYour tablets? so, whenas I rangedWith Praetor, gains for loss were changed."O Memmius! thou did'st long and late---- me supine slow and ----"But (truly see I) in such caseDiddled you were by wight as baseSans mercy. Noble friends go claim!Now god and goddess give you grameDisgrace of Romulus! Remus' shame!
Words in this poem
- famine n.
- General scarcity of food; dearth; a want of provisions; destitution. [F. famine, fr. L. fames hunger; cf. Gr. hani loss, lack, ha to leave.]
- haply adv.
- By hap, chance, luck, or accident; perhaps; it may be.
- supine a.
- Lying on the back, or with the face upward; -- opposed to prone. [L. supinus, akin to sub under, super above. Cf. Sub-, Super-.]
- wight n.
- A whit; a bit; a jot. [OE. wight, wiht, a wight, a whit, AS. wiht, wuht, a creature, a thing; skin to D. wicht a child, OS. & OHG. wiht a creature, thing, G. wicht a creature, Icel. v]
- sans prep.
- Without; deprived or destitute of. Rarely used as an English word. [F., from L. sine without.]
- grame n.
- Anger; wrath; scorn. [See Gram, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Carmen XXVIII: To Friends on Return from Travel 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 XXVIII: To Friends on Return from Travel, in The Carmina (1894), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #20732, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/catullus-carmina/carmen-xxviii-to-friends-on-return-from-travel.html, id L13811.
Form and metre
Carmen XXVIII: To Friends on Return from Travel is 15 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 53% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 AABB--CC-ADDEEE bandA · handA · mineB · fineB · sot · got · rangedC · changedC · late · andA · caseD · baseD · claimE · grameE · shameE
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Followers of Piso, empty band | 9 | /˘˘···/˘· |
| With your light budgets packt to hand, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Veranius best! Fabullus mine! | 8 | ········ |
| What do ye? Bore ye enough, in fine | 9 | ·····˘/·· |
| Of frost and famine with yon sot? | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| What loss or gain have haply got | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Your tablets? so, whenas I ranged | 9 | ·/˘·/˘··˘ |
| With Praetor, gains for loss were changed. | 9 | ·/˘·····˘ |
| "O Memmius! thou did'st long and late | 8 | ········ |
| ---- me supine slow and ----" | 5 | ·˘/·· |
| But (truly see I) in such case | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Diddled you were by wight as base | 7 | ······· |
| Sans mercy. Noble friends go claim! | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Now god and goddess give you grame | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Disgrace of Romulus! Remus' shame! | 9 | ˘/·/˘˘/˘· |
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.