Published Nineteenth Century, March 1883; then 1885. Written on a visit to Sirmio, June 1880 (Mem. ii 247). It alludes to T.’s brother Charles, who had died in 1879 (cp. Prefatory Poem to My Brother’s Sonnets, p. 625). The beauty of Sirmio is the subject of Catullus’s Poem xxxi, which begins Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque / ocelle (T.’s ‘all-but-island’); exclaims o venusta Sirmio (T.’s l. 2); and ends o Lydiae lacus undae: / ridete, quicquid est domi cachinnorum (T.’s l. 8). T. characteristically combines this poem of joy (o quid solutis est beatius curis) with the sadness of Catullus’s Poem ci, an elegy for his dead brother, beginning Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus (apt to T.’s travels), and ending atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. The mingling of the two moods resembles Tears, idle tears: ‘… gather to the eyes, / In looking on the happy Autumn-fields’.
T. wrote to Gladstone, 3 Nov. 1880 (Letters iii; Mem. ii 239): ‘I am glad too that you are touched by my little prefatory poem [Prefatory Poem to My Brother’s Sonnets], so far as to honour it by a comparison with those lovely lines “Multas per terras [for gentes] et multa per aequora vectus”, of which as you truly say neither I “nor any other can surpass the beauty” – no, nor can any modern elegy, so long as men retain the least hope in the afterlife of those whom they loved, equal in pathos the desolation of that everlasting farewell, “Atque in perpetuum frater Ave atque Vale” ’ On the importance of Catullus’s poem to T., see J. Ferguson, English Studies in Africa xii (1969) 54–7.
Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!
So they rowed, and there we landed – ‘O venusta Sirmio!’
There to me through 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 wandered to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below
Sweet Catullus’s all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!
¶385. 3. through all] among H.Nbk 47 1st reading.
6. T. had apparently called Catullus ‘tenderest of Roman poets’ in 1846–7 (Mem. i 266).
8. laughter] laughters MS. D. Bush, Major British Writers (1959) ii 463, observes that the ancient Etruscans of this region were said to be descended from the Lydians of Asia Minor.