Horace: Odes: Four New Translations

Carpe Diem (Horace and Odes 1.11) 

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• 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.
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• 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.
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• Lay wine and wisdom down for either case.
• Contract your infinite longings to this space:
• that while we talk, the miser Time, all haste,
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• comes to foreclose on every hour we’ve borrowed.
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• Seize today. Bank nothing on tomorrow.
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• 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.
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19.4.24

Horace, Odes 1.34 

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• With Octavian in the thunderstorm
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• 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.
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• 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,
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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17.05.17

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus (Horace, Carmina 1.38) 

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• 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.
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• 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.
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• Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,
• displicent nexae philyra coronae;
• mitte sectari rosa quo locorum
• sera moretur.
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• simplici myrto nihil adlabores
• sedulus curo: neque te ministrum
• dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta
• vite bibentem.

“Eheu fugaces” (Horace, Carmina 2.14) 

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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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;
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• 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.
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• 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.