Catullus is one of the great poets of the world, not so much through gifts of imagination—though with these he was well endowed—as through his singleness of nature, his vivid impressibility, and his keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily, that, to produce pure and lasting poetry, it was enough for him to utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. His interests, though limited in range, were all genuine and human. His poems inspired by personal feeling seem to come from him without any effort. He says, on every occasion, exactly what he wanted to say, in clear, forcible, spontaneous language. There are, indeed, even in his simplest poems, a few strokes of imaginative expression, as, for instance,—
Aut quam sidera multa, cum facet nox,
Furtivos hominum vident amores,[595]—
and this, written with the feeling and with the application which Burns makes of the same image,—
Velut prati
Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est;[596]—
and these two touches of tenderness and beauty, which appear in a poem otherwise characterised by a tone of careless drollery,—
Nec sapit pueri instar
Bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna,—