Horace: Odes: Four New Translations
- Leuconoe, cast no cards to find
- how many years of life we’re yet assigned.
- That’s not for knowing. No, girl, don’t consult
- your Babylonian astrological cults.
- Let what’s to come, come to us; and let be.
- We may have many winters yet to see;
- or maybe here’s our last, chafed with the motion
- of every pumice in the Tyrrhenian ocean.
- Lay wine and wisdom down for either case.
- Contract your infinite longings to this space:
- that while we talk, the miser Time, all haste,
- comes to foreclose on every hour we’ve borrowed.
- Seize today. Bank nothing on tomorrow.
- Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
- finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
- temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.
- seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
- quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
- Tyrrhenum. Sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
- spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida
- aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Carpe Diem (Horace and Odes 1.11)
- With Octavian in the thunderstorm
- So many years I’ve left the gods alone
- as they’ve left me alone; and I have kept
- my world clear, rational, little, but my own;
- huge underworld unreason, unroused, slept.
- But I must re-dance pre-enlightened steps;
- child’s chaos roars back, all its winds re-blown.
- For Jupiter, whose usual lightnings leapt
- out of full clouds that crowd-thronged the on-high,
- now burns white bolts down from a cloudless sky.
- His clear-sky thunder rides the blank blue cleft,
- his clear-sky lightning spills earth’s streams, cracks stones;
- this lightning pierces even to hell’s depth;
- he thunders here, and the Outer Ocean groans.
- Jupiter lifts the low, casts down the high,
- installs the nameless in the noble’s throne.
- Shrill Fortune strikes the king uncrowned, bereft,
- shriek-laughs to plant that crown on one unknown.
- Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens,
- insanientis dum sapientiae
- consultus erro, nunc retrorsum
- vela dare atque iterare cursus
- cogor relictos: namque Diespiter,
- igni corusco nubila dividens
- plerumque, per purum tonantis
- egit equos volucremque currum,
- quo bruta tellus et vaga flumina,
- quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari
- sedes Atlanteusque finis
- concutitur. valet ima summis
- mutare et insignem attenuat deus
- obscura promens; hinc apicem rapax:
- Fortuna cum stridore acuto
- sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet.
Horace, Odes 1.34
- Quit oriental artifice, dear child!
- I do not need your woven lime-leaf crown.
- Don’t stray beyond our garden to the wild,
- to pick the late wild rose you’ve hunted down.
- Devoted though you are, you needn’t gild
- the lily. Nor the myrtle. No, dear boy:
- your loveliness by myrtle’s crown’s fulfilled.
- And as I drink to you, so is my joy.
- Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,
- displicent nexae philyra coronae;
- mitte sectari rosa quo locorum
- sera moretur.
- simplici myrto nihil adlabores
- sedulus curo: neque te ministrum
- dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta
- vite bibentem.
Persicos odi, puer, apparatus (Horace, Carmina 1.38)
- Our sorrow, Postumus, is time gone past,
- lost years, sunk, buried, never to reseek.
- Our prayers cannot postpone the wrinkled cheek
- nor looming age. Death always wins at last.
- Sacrifice him two thousand bulls a week,
- dear Postumus—you’d only waste your breath.
- No pleading stays the hand of the god of Death;
- not even giants wade back, once crossed his creek.
- For all of us, some day, that’s all that’s left:
- no matter what our portion in this life—
- fat kings or peasants inanition-rife—
- we all will sail in Charon’s one-way craft.
- No help forgoing bloody warfare’s strife,
- pointless to heed some seer’s “Avoid the sea”.
- No tricks nor hacks can fix mortality;
- the fever-wind’s not the real threat to your life.
- Like it or not, that meandering stream you’ll see,
- the black sleek Cocytus, hell’s languid river
- where the Suppliants, damned, fill leaking pots for ever,
- while Sisyphus strains at his stone eternally.
- Like it or not, your home, your land, your lover—
- you’ll lose them all. Your saplings grew so fast,
- now taller than you, and you they will outlast.
- Your cypresses will be your grave’s shade-cover;
- your heir will drain your cellars to their last,
- will break their locks for the brandy you kept as antique,
- will ruin your lapis floors with the red-stain leak
- of wines too fine for the high priests’ fat repast.
- Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
- labuntur anni nec pietas moram
- rugis et instanti senectae
- adferet indomitaeque morti,
- non, si trecenis quotquot eunt dies,
- amice, places inlacrimabilem
- Plutona tauris, qui ter amplum
- Geryonen Tityonque tristi
- conpescit unda, scilicet omnibus
- quicumque terrae munere vescimur
- enaviganda, sive reges
- sive inopes erimus coloni.
- frustra cruento Marte carebimus
- fractisque rauci fluctibus Hadriae,
- frustra per autumnos nocentem
- corporibus metuemus Austrum:
- visendus ater flumine languido
- Cocytos errans et Danai genus
- infame damnatusque longi
- Sisyphus Aeolides laboris.
- linquenda tellus et domus et placens
- uxor neque harum quas colis arborum
- te praeter invisas cupressos
- ulla brevem dominum sequetur.
- absumet heres Caecuba dignior
- servata centum clavibus et mero
- tinguet pavimentum superbo,
- pontificum potiore cenis.
“Eheu fugaces” (Horace, Carmina 2.14)
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Chappell, S.G. Horace: Odes: Four New Translations. Philosophies 2024, 9, 123. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040123
Chappell SG. Horace: Odes: Four New Translations. Philosophies. 2024; 9(4):123. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040123
Chicago/Turabian StyleChappell, Sophie Grace. 2024. "Horace: Odes: Four New Translations" Philosophies 9, no. 4: 123. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9040123