Vivamus atque amemus

As Catullus says, "Let us Live and Love".

Happy Valentine's Day all!. I don't really celebrate the holiday the way Hallmark wants me to but I do like a bit of love in my February. I think the world always needs a bit more love. So tonight I'll read Neil Gaiman's twisted Harlequin Valentine short story and I'll break out a bit of poetry. A friend of mine got me started with the great Roman love poems. Here is the famous (perhaps infamous) love poet Catullus with Poem 5.

Let us live my Lesbia and love
and value at one penny
all the talk of stern old men
Suns can set and rise again
we, when once our brief light has set
must sleep one never ending night

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred 
then a second thousand, then a second hundred
then yet another thousand then a hundred
Then when we have made up many thousands
we will wreck the count
least we know it or
any devil have power to cast an evil eye upon us
when he knows the total of our kisses.

Original Latin:
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.