‘ Frater Ave atque Vale. ’
Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row !1
So they row’d, and there we landed— ‘ O venusta Sirmio !’2
There to me thro’ all the groves of olive in the summer glow,3
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,4
Came that ‘ Ave atque Vale ’ of the Poet’s hopeless woe,5
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago,6
‘ Frater Ave atque Vale ’— as we wander’d to and fro7
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda-lake below8
Sweet Catullus’s all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio !9