Saturday, February 26, 2011

Horace, Ode 1.9

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus
silvae laborantes, geluque
flumina constiterint acuto.

Dissolve frigues ligna super foco
large reponens atque benignius
deprome quadrimum Sabina,
o Thaliarche, merum diota.

Permitte divis cetera, qui simul
stravere ventos aequore fervido
deproeliantis, nec cupressi
nec veteres agitantur orni.

Quid sit futurum cras fuge quaerere, et
quem Fors dierum cumque dabit lucro
appone, nec dulcis ameres
sperne puer neque tu choreas,

donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem susurri
composita reqetantur hora,

nunc et latentis proditor intimo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
pignusque derptum lacertis
aut digito male pertinaci.


You see how high Soracte stands, bright with
snow, and no longer do the straining forests
support the burden, and the rivers have
frozen with sharp frost.

Melt the cold piling logs high upon
the hearth and more generously
draw off the four-winter wine, oh
Thaliarche, from the Sabine jar.

Leave other things to the gods, who
as soon as they calm the winds on the stormy seas
from fighting each other, they agitate neither
the cypress trees nor the old ash trees.

Avoid seeking what is about to be tomorrow, and
assign to profit whatever days Fortune will
give, and scorn neither loves
nor dances, boy,

while your bloom is absent from irritable
white hairs. Now both field and parks
and light whispers repeated under night
at the arranged hour,

and now the pleasing laughter betraying the
hidden girl in the most secret corner
and the pledge seized from the
badly resisting arms with a finger.

2 comments:

  1. should it not be 'and the pledge seized from the
    badly resisting arms OR (from) a finger"?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Should not Thaliarche (Vocative case) be given as Thaliarchus, as most Latin proper names are placed in the Nominative case in English?

    ReplyDelete