R. Ellis.
Langhorne is best known by his translation of Plutarch's Lives. But he was a copious poet; and Catullus has never perhaps been more gracefully rendered than in the following piece:
LESBIA, live to love and pleasure,
Careless what the grave may say:
When each moment is a treasure
Why should lovers lose a day?
Setting suns shall rise in glory,
But when little life is o'er,
There's an end of all the story—
We shall sleep, and wake no more.
Give me, then, a thousand kisses,
Twice ten thousand more bestow,
Till the sum of boundless blisses
Neither we nor envy know.
J. Langhorne.
I append the beginning of Blacklock's version:
THOUGH sour-loquacious Age reprove,
Let us, my Lesbia, live for love.
For when the short-lived suns decline
They but retire more bright to shine:
But we, when fleeting life is o'er
And light and love can bless no more,
Are ravished from each dear delight
To sleep one long eternal night.
T. Blacklock.