Remembering Catullus

Frater Ave atque Vale

Alfred Tennyson

ROW us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!
So they row’d, and there we landed—‘O venusta Sirmio!’
There to me thro’ all the groves of olive in the summer glow,
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that ‘Ave atque Vale’ of the Poet’s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago,
‘Frater Ave atque Vale’—as we wander’d to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below
Sweet Catullus’s all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

On our official day off we went on a boat trip - sort of like Clyde cruising on PS Waverley - which gave us over two hours In Sirmione, at the southern end of Lake Garda. I have wonderful memories of wandering about the Roman ruins there in my long-gone teens; I knew it would be very different now, and I was right. Too many people - so we looked at the view Catullus would have looked at, among the silvery olive trees, and came away without padding in the blood-warm water at the lake edge.

We did nonetheless have a good day, and I remembered the poem. Ave atque vale…