Translations from Horace

Daniel Golden

Brown University

Horace: Odes II.3

Be careful to maintain an even temper

Even when the way is mountainous, and when

Things go well be temperately happy,

Delius. For you will die

Whether your life is smudged from end to end

With gloomy meditation, or at times

Relaxing on a meadow, you enjoy

jars of Falernian wine.

Why do enormous pines and silver poplars

Share the hospitable shadows of their branches?

Why does irrepressible water

tremble in zig-zagging streams?

Cherish the blossoms of roses, wines and perfumes,

All pleasures squeezed within the narrow round

Of Time and Circumstance:

death-blackened threads of the fates.

In time you must abandon all our pastures

And your home and the spacious yellow villa

Licked by the Tiber; all your high-heaped

riches to be wasted on an heir.

Whether you’re a distant relative

Of ancient Inachus or a slave—

No matter. You linger in the light

a victim of pitiless Orcus.

We are all collected. An urn is shaken

With the lives of all, and sooner or later all

Our lives fly out. And we must go

to eternal exile in a little boat.

Horace: Odes IV.1

Venus, do you plan to break
our old, long-honored truce? I plead with you, I plead.

I am not as I used to be
when Cinara reigned over me. O cease to bend

Vicious mother of gentle Cupid,
my five hard decades to your flexible command.

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate

To hoist your revels on your swan-yoked chariot

And send them swiftly to the house
of Paulus Maximus, if someone need be snared?

For he’s a handsome, noble youth,
never silent on behalf of those that need his help.

A boy who’d find a hundred ways
to spread the banners of your army far and wide;

And when, by virtue of his skill,
he’s made some lavish rival seem ridiculous,

He’ll build a marble statue of you
under a roof of cedar near the Alban Lake.

There abundant clouds of incense
shall be drawn in through your nostrils, there orchestras

Of lyres and Berecyntian flutes
and pipes shall tempt you with their honest melodies,

And there, twice daily, boys and tender
virgin girls praising your godliness shall make

The earth tremble with their white feet
as they dance to the triple beat of Salian Humns.

Nothing tempts me now, not boys
nor women nor the sad, fond hope of mutual love,

Not fervent bouts of drinking nor
spring-fresh flowers bound in honor about my head.

So why, O Ligurinus, why
do unaccustomed tears persist along my cheeks?

Why does my practised tongue fall silent
among my thoughtfully arranged, unuttered words?

At night I dream of you, I hold
you captive, now soar after you through Campus Martius,

Through stubborn waves struggle toward you.

Horace: Odes IV.13

They’ve heard, Lyce, the gods have heard my prayer,

They’ve heard, Lyce. You’re growing old, and yet

you try to seem
beautiful. Shamelessly drunk,

With little shivering songs you irritate

Reluctant Cupid, who alights upon
the flourishing down
of Chia’s cheeks, heedlessly passes

Ancient, blighted, dried-up oaks like you.

For now your rotting teeth and wrinkled brow
and white-flecked hair
make you look hideously old.

Robes of Coan purple can’t restore you,

Nor can precious jewels. Escaping,
the days enclose
your fabled beauty—calendars keep it.

What has happened to that graceful walk, that lilting

Voice? What do you retain of her, of her
who once breathed love,
who once snatched me from myself?

When Cinara died you inherited

Her fame and beauty. But the fates that shortened
Cinara’s life
plan to keep Lyce alive

A poor, old, withered crow’s age.

This way fervent boys can contemplate,

With smiles and laughter,
the torch dissolved in its ashes.