Textures and developments

Had we been taught Catullus at school, not Virgil - heavy and resisted - I might have tried to learn Latin. Yet since Gaius Catullus too wrote Latin, I knew of him as just a name until his work came m y way recently in Jack Lindsay's English verse. There it is true poetry for which credit is perhaps due as much to the translator as to the author. It is poetry rendered the more acceptable for readers by a frequent ironic streak: Where have you led me, Lesbia? For I'm blind with such a ruinous devotion curst. I could not wish you well though good and kind, nor cease from loving though you did your worst.