Even further inspired by the aforementioned Anglophone uses of this odd but fun meter, he thought he'd give Catullus himself a crack:

My exercise in hendecasyllabics. First the Latin, indicating the elisions you need to make it scan right:

Luget(e), O Veneres Cupidinesque,
et quantum (e)st hominum venustiorum:
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quem plus ill(a) oculis suis amabat.
nam mellitus erat suamque norat
ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
nec ses(e) a gremi(o) illius movebat,
sed circumsiliens mod(o) huc mod(o) illuc
ad solam domin(a)m usque pipiabat.
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, qu(ae) omnia bella devoratis:
tam bellum mihi passer(e)m abstulistis
o factum male! o miselle passer!
tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

Latin and Greek poetry used various quantitative meters -- patterns of long and short syllables, in which the metrically prominent first syllables of feet (the "ictus") did not necessarily coincide with the stresses of words, which could make for complicated effects in a line. This meter of eleven syllables goes:
- - | - u u | - u | - u | - -
Rhyme was not a structural requirement, but it seems Catullus used a few internal rhymes intentionally.

I think this poem either tear jerkingly moving or comically overwrought, as my mood varies.

Now my English, with some attempts to reproduce something of the accidental rhymes and assonances and enjambments, and trying for colloqiuality. Judge for yourself whether this language really suits itself to this kind of meter.

Weep! all goddesses, gods of love, and all true
Ladies, gentlemen, found throughout the wide world!
Sparrow's gone to the grave. Her pet, my girlfriend's
Sparrow, light of her life, is gone. My girlfriend
Cared for him, even more than for her own eyes.
Sweet as nectar he was, and knew his mistress
Just as well as a baby knows her own ma.
Nor too far from his lady's lap he struck out
But, skip! hop! run-around, about, and non-stop
At his mistress alone he peeped his heart out.
Leaps and bounds 'long a shadow-road he goes now,
Gone down where they dun' letcha out, but no-how.
Curses light on you all, accursed phantoms,
Hell's devourers of all that's fine and lovely!
Such was Sparrow, the pet you ravished from me.
Deed most damnable! You -- pathetic sparrow --
It's all your doing now that makes my girlfriend's
Swollen, poor little eyes go red with weeping.

Go Pavel!

We'd been thinking about Catullus a fair bit recently - mainly his use of the Greek hendecasyllabic meter. It's a bit strange feeling at first, but actually puts kind of a spring in the step once one gets used to it. Anyway, Pavel got really inspired and found a couple English-language poems using this meter:

Hendecasyllabics

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard it is, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty meter.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather -
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment -
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half-coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(Next one's closer to home:)

For Once, Then Something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

-Robert Frost

Try reading these aloud. What do you think? The rhythm's kind of tricky until you get used to it, isn't it?

Sparrows have started pairing off in the yard; it's that time of the year. That and Sappho were what got me thinking about Catullus the other day. This, too:

Passer Mortuus Est

Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness,--presently
Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain
Dries the sheer libation,
And the little petulant hand
Is an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sparrows.

A considerable chunk of what what remains today of Catullus's work refers to 'Lesbia,' his pseudonym for his lover Clodia, apparently a poet in her own right. These works, some of which are just fragmentary, run the gamut of emotions from ecstatic joy to despair and even cynicism. Probably the best known of these might be his musings on someone his love loved more than she loved him:

Sparrow, my lady's pet,
with whom she often plays whilst she holds you in her lap,
or gives you her finger-tip to peck and
provokes you to bite sharply,
whenever she, the bright-shining lady of my love,
has a mind for some sweet pretty play,
in hope, as I think, that when the sharper smart of love abates,
she may find some small relief from her pain—
ah, might I but play with you as she does,
and lighten the gloomy cares of my heart!
This is as welcome to me as (they say)
to the swift maiden was the golden apple,
which loosed her girdle too long tied.


Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids
and however many there are of charming people:
my girl's sparrow is dead—
the sparrow, delight of my girl,
whom that girl loved more than her own eyes.
For he was honey-sweet and had known
the lady better than a girl [knows] her mother herself,
nor did he move himself from that girl's lap,
but hopping around now here now there
he chirped constantly to his mistress alone,
he who now goes through the shadowy journey
thither, whence they deny that anyone returns.
But may it go badly for you evil shadows
of hell, who devour all beautiful things.
You have taken from me so beautiful a sparrow.
Oh evil deed! Oh wretched little sparrow!
Now through your deeds the eyes of my girl,
swollen with weeping, are red.



"Lesbia and Her Sparrow," Sir Edward John Poynter