Give me other thousand kisses;
Give me other hundred blisses;
And when thousands now are done,
Let us confuse them every one,
That we the number cannot know,
And none that saw us kissing so
Might glut his envious busy spleen
By counting o’er the kisses that had been.”
In another poem addressed to Lesbia (Carm. 7), Catullus says:
“You ask how many kisses of yours, Lesbia, maybe enough for me; and more. As the numerous sands that lie on the spicy shores of Cyrene, between the oracle of sultry Jove and the sacred tomb of old Battus;[5] or as the many stars that in the silence of night behold men’s furtive amours; to kiss you with so many kisses is enough and more for madly fond Catullus; such a multitude as prying gossips can neither count, nor bewitch with their evil tongues.”