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?