No tongue shall tell the sum but mine;
No lips shall fascinate but thine!”
We cannot dismiss Catullus without one more specimen of his osculatory exuberance. In his lines “To My Love” (Carm. 48), he says:
“Were I allowed to kiss your sweet eyes without stint, I would kiss on and on up to three hundred thousand times; nor even then should I ever have enough, not though our crop of kissing were thicker than the dry ears of the cornfield.”
Or in Lamb’s metrical version:
“If, all-complying, thou wouldst grant
Thy lovely eyes to kiss, my fair,
Long as I pleased, oh! I would plant
Three hundred thousand kisses there.
“Nor could I even then refrain,