Failed! Failed! FAILED! Sorry Catullus! O Me Miserum, Catulle

 I wrote http://left-footer.blogspot.com/2011/01/catulluss-farewell-to-ashes-of-his.html that I would try to translate Catullus's Carmen 101 into English (and as a sonnet forsooth!) Rash, I was, foolhardy and, well ...... 

Even with the lapidary quality of Latin, it is difficult to make ten lines into fourteen, without padding them out, and losing the starkness of the original.

Catulllus Carmen 101

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
Avdenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias
Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
Tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

My attempt in blank verse is not completely faithful, as any Latinist would point out, and certainly is mere verse, not poetry.

Through many seas and through many peoples borne
I come to perform these miserable obsequies,
To give you, dead, the last gift to the dead,
To speak in vain to voiceless ash and mourn.
Since fate has snatched you away, O my poor brother
So unjustly torn you from me, accept these rites
From ancient times through family custom learnt
Ancestral ceremonies here intermingled
With bitter sorrow, flooded with brotherly tears.
And now for ever, brother, hail and farewell.

SORRY, CATULLUS, AND ANYONE WHO READS THIS.

Give me one adverse comment and I'll take it down.