I.
INTERMISSA, VENUS.
Yet again thou wak'st the flame
That long had slumber'd! Spare me, Venus, spare!
Trust me, I am not the same
As in the reign of Cinara, kind and fair.
Cease thy softening spells to prove
On this old heart, by fifty years made hard,
Cruel Mother of sweet Love!
Haste, where gay youth solicits thy regard.
With thy purple cygnets fly
To Paullus' door, a seasonable guest;
There within hold revelry,
There light thy flame in that congenial breast.
He, with birth and beauty graced,
The trembling client's champion, ne'er tongue-tied,
Master of each manly taste,
Shall bear thy conquering banners far and wide.
Let him smile in triumph gay,
True heart, victorious over lavish hand,
By the Alban lake that day
'Neath citron roof all marble shalt thou stand:
Incense there and fragrant spice
With odorous fumes thy nostrils shall salute;
Blended notes thine ear entice,
The lyre, the pipe, the Berecyntine flute:
Graceful youths and maidens bright
Shall twice a day thy tuneful praise resound,
While their feet, so fair and white,
In Salian measure three times beat the ground.
I can relish love no more,
Nor flattering hopes that tell me hearts are true,
Nor the revel's loud uproar,
Nor fresh-wreathed flowerets, bathed in vernal dew.
Ah! but why, my Ligurine,
Steal trickling tear-drops down my wasted cheek?
Wherefore halts this tongue of mine,
So eloquent once, so faltering now and weak?
Now I hold you in my chain,
And clasp you close, all in a nightly dream;
Now, still dreaming, o'er the plain
I chase you; now, ah cruel! down the stream.
II.
PINDARUM QUISQUIS.
Who fain at Pindar's flight would aim,
On waxen wings, Iulus, he
Soars heavenward, doom'd to give his name
To some new sea.
Pindar, like torrent from the steep
Which, swollen with rain, its banks o'erflows,
With mouth unfathomably deep,
Foams, thunders, glows,
All worthy of Apollo's bay,
Whether in dithyrambic roll
Pouring new words he burst away
Beyond control,
Or gods and god-born heroes tell,
Whose arm with righteous death could tame
Grim Centaurs, tame Chimaeras fell,
Out-breathing flame,
Or bid the boxer or the steed
In deathless pride of victory live,
And dower them with a nobler meed
Than sculptors give,
Or mourn the bridegroom early torn
From his young bride, and set on high
Strength, courage, virtue's golden morn,
Too good to die.
Antonius! yes, the winds blow free,
When Dirce's swan ascends the skies,
To waft him. I, like Matine bee,
In act and guise,
That culls its sweets through toilsome hours,
Am roaming Tibur's banks along,
And fashioning with puny powers
A laboured song.
Your Muse shall sing in loftier strain
How Caesar climbs the sacred height,
The fierce Sygambrians in his train,
With laurel dight,
Than whom the Fates ne'er gave mankind
A richer treasure or more dear,
Nor shall, though earth again should find
The golden year.
Your Muse shall tell of public sports,
And holyday, and votive feast,
For Caesar's sake, and brawling courts
Where strife has ceased.
Then, if my voice can aught avail,
Grateful for him our prayers have won,
My song shall echo, "Hail, all hail,
Auspicious Sun!"
There as you move, "Ho! Triumph, ho!
Great Triumph!" once and yet again
All Rome shall cry, and spices strow
Before your train.
Ten bulls, ten kine, your debt discharge:
A calf new-wean'd from parent cow,
Battening on pastures rich and large,
Shall quit my vow.
Like moon just dawning on the night
The crescent honours of his head;
One dapple spot of snowy white,
The rest all red.
III.
QUEM TU, MELPOMENE.
He whom thou, Melpomene,
Hast welcomed with thy smile, in life arriving,
Ne'er by boxer's skill shall be
Renown'd abroad, for Isthmian mastery striving;
Him shall never fiery steed
Draw in Achaean car a conqueror seated;
Him shall never martial deed
Show, crown'd with bay, after proud kings defeated,
Climbing Capitolian steep:
But the cool streams that make green Tibur flourish,
And the tangled forest deep,
On soft Aeolian airs his fame shall nourish.
Rome, of cities first and best,
Deigns by her sons' according voice to hail me
Fellow-bard of poets blest,
And faint and fainter envy's growls assail me.
Goddess, whose Pierian art
The lyre's sweet sounds can modulate and measure,
Who to dumb fish canst impart
The music of the swan, if such thy pleasure:
O, 'tis all of thy dear grace
That every finger points me out in going
Lyrist of the Roman race;
Breath, power to charm, if mine, are thy bestowing!
IV.
QUALEM MINISTRUM.
E'en as the lightning's minister,
Whom Jove o'er all the feather'd breed
Made sovereign, having proved him sure
Erewhile on auburn Ganymede;
Stirr'd by warm youth and inborn power,
He quits the nest with timorous wing,
For winter's storms have ceased to lower,
And zephyrs of returning spring
Tempt him to launch on unknown skies;
Next on the fold he stoops downright;
Last on resisting serpents flies,
Athirst for foray and for flight:
As tender kidling on the grass
Espies, uplooking from her food,
A lion's whelp, and knows, alas!
Those new-set teeth shall drink her blood:
So look'd the Raetian mountaineers
On Drusus:--whence in every field
They learn'd through immemorial years
The Amazonian axe to wield,
I ask not now: not all of truth
We seekers find: enough to know
The wisdom of the princely youth
Has taught our erst victorious foe
What prowess dwells in boyish hearts
Rear'd in the shrine of a pure home,
What strength Augustus' love imparts
To Nero's seed, the hope of Rome.
Good sons and brave good sires approve:
Strong bullocks, fiery colts, attest
Their fathers' worth, nor weakling dove
Is hatch'd in savage eagle's nest.
But care draws forth the power within,
And cultured minds are strong for good:
Let manners fail, the plague of sin
Taints e'en the course of gentle blood.
How great thy debt to Nero's race,
O Rome, let red Metaurus say,
Slain Hasdrubal, and victory's grace
First granted on that glorious day
Which chased the clouds, and show'd the sun,
When Hannibal o'er Italy
Ran, as swift flames o'er pine-woods run,
Or Eurus o'er Sicilia's sea.
Henceforth, by fortune aiding toil,
Rome's prowess grew: her fanes, laid waste
By Punic sacrilege and spoil,
Beheld at length their gods replaced.
Then the false Libyan own'd his doom:--
"Weak deer, the wolves' predestined prey,
Blindly we rush on foes, from whom
'Twere triumph won to steal away.
That race which, strong from Ilion's fires,
Its gods, on Tuscan waters tost,
Its sons, its venerable sires,
Bore to Ausonia's citied coast;
That race, like oak by axes shorn
On Algidus with dark leaves rife,
Laughs carnage, havoc, all to scorn,
And draws new spirit from the knife.
Not the lopp'd Hydra task'd so sore
Alcides, chafing at the foil:
No pest so fell was born of yore
From Colchian or from Theban soil.
Plunged in the deep, it mounts to sight
More splendid: grappled, it will quell
Unbroken powers, and fight a fight
Whose story widow'd wives shall tell.
No heralds shall my deeds proclaim
To Carthage now: lost, lost is all:
A nation's hope, a nation's name,
They died with dying Hasdrubal."
What will not Claudian hands achieve?
Jove's favour is their guiding star,
And watchful potencies unweave
For them the tangled paths of war.
V.
DIVIS ORTE BONIS.
Best guardian of Rome's people, dearest boon
Of a kind Heaven, thou lingerest all too long:
Thou bad'st thy senate look to meet thee soon:
Do not thy promise wrong.
Restore, dear chief, the light thou tak'st away:
Ah! when, like spring, that gracious mien of thine
Dawns on thy Rome, more gently glides the day,
And suns serener shine.
See her whose darling child a long year past
Has dwelt beyond the wild Carpathian foam;
That long year o'er, the envious southern blast
Still bars him from his home:
Weeping and praying to the shore she clings,
Nor ever thence her straining eyesight turns:
So, smit by loyal passion's restless stings,
Rome for her Caesar yearns.
In safety range the cattle o'er the mead:
Sweet Peace, soft Plenty, swell the golden grain:
O'er unvex'd seas the sailors blithely speed:
Fair Honour shrinks from stain:
No guilty lusts the shrine of home defile:
Cleansed is the hand without, the heart within:
The father's features in his children smile:
Swift vengeance follows sin.
Who fears the Parthian or the Scythian horde,
Or the rank growth that German forests yield,
While Caesar lives? who trembles at the sword
The fierce Iberians wield?
In his own hills each labours down the day,
Teaching the vine to clasp the widow'd tree:
Then to his cups again, where, feasting gay,
He hails his god in thee.
A household power, adored with prayers and wine,
Thou reign'st auspicious o'er his hour of ease:
Thus grateful Greece her Castor made divine,
And her great Hercules.
Ah! be it thine long holydays to give
To thy Hesperia! thus, dear chief, we pray
At sober sunrise; thus at mellow eve,
When ocean hides the day.
VI.
DIVE, QUEM PROLES.
Thou who didst make thy vengeful might
To Niobe and Tityos known,
And Peleus' son, when Troy's tall height
Was nigh his own,
Victorious else, for thee no peer,
Though, strong in his sea-parent's power,
He shook with that tremendous spear
The Dardan tower.
He, like a pine by axes sped,
Or cypress sway'd by angry gust,
Fell ruining, and laid his head
In Trojan dust.
Not his to lie in covert pent
Of the false steed, and sudden fall
On Priam's ill-starr'd merriment
In bower and hall:
His ruthless arm in broad bare day
The infant from the breast had torn,
Nay, given to flame, ah, well a way!
The babe unborn:
But, won by Venus' voice and thine,
Relenting Jove Aeneas will'd
With other omens more benign
New walls to build.
Sweet tuner of the Grecian lyre,
Whose locks are laved in Xanthus' dews,
Blooming Agyieus! help, inspire
My Daunian Muse!
'Tis Phoebus, Phoebus gifts my tongue
With minstrel art and minstrel fires:
Come, noble youths and maidens sprung
From noble sires,
Blest in your Dian's guardian smile,
Whose shafts the flying silvans stay,
Come, foot the Lesbian measure, while
The lyre I play:
Sing of Latona's glorious boy,
Sing of night's queen with crescent horn,
Who wings the fleeting months with joy,
And swells the corn.
And happy brides shall say, "'Twas mine,
When years the cyclic season brought,
To chant the festal hymn divine
By HORACE taught."
VII.
DIFFUGERE NIVES.
The snow is fled: the trees their leaves put on,
The fields their green:
Earth owns the change, and rivers lessening run.
Their banks between.
Naked the Nymphs and Graces in the meads
The dance essay:
"No 'scaping death" proclaims the year, that speeds
This sweet spring day.
Frosts yield to zephyrs; Summer drives out Spring,
To vanish, when
Rich Autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,--
Winter again!
Yet the swift moons repair Heaven's detriment:
We, soon as thrust
Where good Aeneas, Tullus, Ancus went,
What are we? dust.
Can Hope assure you one more day to live
From powers above?
You rescue from your heir whate'er you give
The self you love.
When life is o'er, and Minos has rehearsed
The grand last doom,
Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst
Torquatus' tomb.
Not Dian's self can chaste Hippolytus
To life recall,
Nor Theseus free his loved Pirithous
From Lethe's thrall.
VIII.
DONAREM PATERAS.
Ah Censorinus! to my comrades true
Rich cups, rare bronzes, gladly would I send:
Choice tripods from Olympia on each friend
Would I confer, choicer on none than you,
Had but my fate such gems of art bestow'd
As cunning Scopas or Parrhasius wrought,
This with the brush, that with the chisel taught
To image now a mortal, now a god.
But these are not my riches: your desire
Such luxury craves not, and your means disdain:
A poet's strain you love; a poet's strain
Accept, and learn the value of the lyre.
Not public gravings on a marble base,
Whence comes a second life to men of might
E'en in the tomb: not Hannibal's swift flight,
Nor those fierce threats flung back into his face,
Not impious Carthage in its last red blaze,
In clearer light sets forth his spotless fame,
Who from crush'd Afric took away--a name,
Than rude Calabria's tributary lays.
Let silence hide the good your hand has wrought.
Farewell, reward! Had blank oblivion's power
Dimm'd the bright deeds of Romulus, at this hour,
Despite his sire and mother, he were nought.
Thus Aeacus has 'scaped the Stygian wave,
By grace of poets and their silver tongue,
Henceforth to live the happy isles among.
No, trust the Muse: she opes the good man's grave,
And lifts him to the gods. So Hercules,
His labours o'er, sits at the board of Jove:
So Tyndareus' offspring shine as stars above,
Saving lorn vessels from the yawning seas:
So Bacchus, with the vine-wreath round his hair,
Gives prosperous issue to his votary's prayer.
IX.
NE FORTE CREDAS.
Think not those strains can e'er expire,
Which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar
Of Aufidus, to Latium's lyre
I sing with arts unknown before.
Though Homer fill the foremost throne,
Yet grave Stesichorus still can please,
And fierce Alcaeus holds his own,
With Pindar and Simonides.
The songs of Teos are not mute,
And Sappho's love is breathing still:
She told her secret to the lute,
And yet its chords with passion thrill.
Not Sparta's queen alone was fired
By broider'd robe and braided tress,
And all the splendours that attired
Her lover's guilty loveliness:
Not only Teucer to the field
His arrows brought, nor Ilion
Beneath a single conqueror reel'd:
Not Crete's majestic lord alone,
Or Sthenelus, earn'd the Muses' crown:
Not Hector first for child and wife,
Or brave Deiphobus, laid down
The burden of a manly life.
Before Atrides men were brave:
But ah! oblivion, dark and long,
Has lock'd them in a tearless grave,
For lack of consecrating song.
'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,
What difference? YOU shall ne'er be dumb,
While strains of mine have voice and breath:
The dull neglect of days to come
Those hard-won honours shall not blight:
No, Lollius, no: a soul is yours,
Clear-sighted, keen, alike upright
When fortune smiles, and when she lowers:
To greed and rapine still severe,
Spurning the gain men find so sweet:
A consul, not of one brief year,
But oft as on the judgment-seat
You bend the expedient to the right,
Turn haughty eyes from bribes away,
Or bear your banners through the fight,
Scattering the foeman's firm array.
The lord of boundless revenues,
Salute not him as happy: no,
Call him the happy, who can use
The bounty that the gods bestow,
Can bear the load of poverty,
And tremble not at death, but sin:
No recreant he when called to die
In cause of country or of kin.
XI.
EST MIHI NONUM.
Here is a cask of Alban, more
Than nine years old: here grows
Green parsley, Phyllis, and good store
Of ivy too
(Wreathed ivy suits your hair, you know)
The plate shines bright: the altar, strewn
With vervain, hungers for the flow
Of lambkin's blood.
There's stir among the serving folk;
They bustle, bustle, boy and girl;
The flickering flames send up the smoke
In many a curl.
But why, you ask, this special cheer?
We celebrate the feast of Ides,
Which April's month, to Venus dear,
In twain divides.
O, 'tis a day for reverence,
E'en my own birthday scarce so dear,
For my Maecenas counts from thence
Each added year.
'Tis Telephus that you'd bewitch:
But he is of a high degree;
Bound to a lady fair and rich,
He is not free.
O think of Phaethon half burn'd,
And moderate your passion's greed:
Think how Bellerophon was spurn'd
By his wing'd steed.
So learn to look for partners meet,
Shun lofty things, nor raise your aims
Above your fortune. Come then, sweet,
My last of flames
(For never shall another fair
Enslave me), learn a tune, to sing
With that dear voice: to music care
Shall yield its sting.
XII.
JAM VERIS COMITES.
The gales of Thrace, that hush the unquiet sea,
Spring's comrades, on the bellying canvas blow:
Clogg'd earth and brawling streams alike are free
From winter's weight of snow.
Wailing her Itys in that sad, sad strain,
Builds the poor bird, reproach to after time
Of Cecrops' house, for bloody vengeance ta'en
On foul barbaric crime.
The keepers of fat lambkins chant their loves
To silvan reeds, all in the grassy lea,
And pleasure Him who tends the flocks and groves
Of dark-leaved Arcady.
It is a thirsty season, Virgil mine:
But would you taste the grape's Calenian juice,
Client of noble youths, to earn your wine
Some nard you must produce.
A tiny box of nard shall bring to light
The cask that in Sulpician cellar lies:
O, it can give new hopes, so fresh and bright,
And gladden gloomy eyes.
You take the bait? then come without delay
And bring your ware: be sure, 'tis not my plan
To let you drain my liquor and not pay,
As might some wealthy man.
Come, quit those covetous thoughts, those knitted brows,
Think on the last black embers, while you may,
And be for once unwise. When time allows,
'Tis sweet the fool to play.
XIII.
AUDIVERE, LYCE.
The gods have heard, the gods have heard my prayer;
Yes, Lyce! you are growing old, and still
You struggle to look fair;
You drink, and dance, and trill
Your songs to youthful Love, in accents weak
With wine, and age, and passion. Youthful Love!
He dwells in Chia's cheek,
And hears her harp-strings move.
Rude boy, he flies like lightning o'er the heath
Past wither'd trees like you; you're wrinkled now;
The white has left your teeth
And settled on your brow.
Your Coan silks, your jewels bright as stars,
Ah no! they bring not back the days of old,
In public calendars
By flying Time enroll'd.
Where now that beauty? where those movements? where
That colour? what of her, of her is left,
Who, breathing Love's own air,
Me of myself bereft,
Who reign'd in Cinara's stead, a fair, fair face,
Queen of sweet arts? but Fate to Cinara gave
A life of little space;
And now she cheats the grave
Of Lyce, spared to raven's length of days,
That youth may see, with laughter and disgust,
A fire-brand, once ablaze,
Now smouldering in grey dust.
XIV.
QUAE CURA PATRUM.
What honours can a grateful Rome,
A grateful senate, Caesar, give
To make thy worth through days to come
Emblazon'd on our records live,
Mightiest of chieftains whomsoe'er
The sun beholds from heaven on high?
They know thee now, thy strength in war,
Those unsubdued Vindelici.
Thine was the sword that Drusus drew,
When on the Breunian hordes he fell,
And storm'd the fierce Genaunian crew
E'en in their Alpine citadel,
And paid them back their debt twice told;
'Twas then the elder Nero came
To conflict, and in ruin roll'd
Stout Raetian kernes of giant frame.
O, 'twas a gallant sight to see
The shocks that beat upon the brave
Who chose to perish and be free!
As south winds scourge the rebel wave
When through rent clouds the Pleiads weep,
So keen his force to smite, and smite
The foe, or make his charger leap
Through the red furnace of the fight.
Thus Daunia's ancient river fares,
Proud Aufidus, with bull-like horn,
When swoln with choler he prepares
A deluge for the fields of corn.
So Claudius charged and overthrew
The grim barbarian's mail-clad host,
The foremost and the hindmost slew,
And conquer'd all, and nothing lost.
The force, the forethought, were thine own,
Thine own the gods. The selfsame day
When, port and palace open thrown,
Low at thy footstool Egypt lay,
That selfsame day, three lustres gone,
Another victory to thine hand
Was given; another field was won
By grace of Caesar's high command.
Thee Spanish tribes, unused to yield,
Mede, Indian, Scyth that knows no home,
Acknowledge, sword at once and shield
Of Italy and queenly Rome.
Ister to thee, and Tanais fleet,
And Nile that will not tell his birth,
To thee the monstrous seas that beat
On Britain's coast, the end of earth,
To thee the proud Iberians bow,
And Gauls, that scorn from death to flee;
The fierce Sygambrian bends his brow,
And drops his arms to worship thee
XV.
PHOEBUS VOLENTEM.
Of battles fought I fain had told,
And conquer'd towns, when Phoebus smote
His harp-string: "Sooth, 'twere over-bold
To tempt wide seas in that frail boat."
Thy age, great Caesar, has restored
To squalid fields the plenteous grain,
Given back to Rome's almighty Lord
Our standards, torn from Parthian fane,
Has closed Quirinian Janus' gate,
Wild passion's erring walk controll'd,
Heal'd the foul plague-spot of the state,
And brought again the life of old,
Life, by whose healthful power increased
The glorious name of Latium spread
To where the sun illumes the east
From where he seeks his western bed.
While Caesar rules, no civil strife
Shall break our rest, nor violence rude,
Nor rage, that whets the slaughtering knife
And plunges wretched towns in feud.
The sons of Danube shall not scorn
The Julian edicts; no, nor they
By Tanais' distant river born,
Nor Persia, Scythia, or Cathay.
And we on feast and working-tide,
While Bacchus' bounties freely flow,
Our wives and children at our side,
First paying Heaven the prayers we owe,
Shall sing of chiefs whose deeds are done,
As wont our sires, to flute or shell,
And Troy, Anchises, and the son
Of Venus on our tongues shall dwell.
CARMEN SAECULARE.
PHOEBE, SILVARUMQUE.
Phoebus and Dian, huntress fair,
To-day and always magnified,
Bright lights of heaven, accord our prayer
This holy tide,
On which the Sibyl's volume wills
That youths and maidens without stain
To gods, who love the seven dear hills,
Should chant the strain!
Sun, that unchanged, yet ever new,
Lead'st out the day and bring'st it home,
May nought be present to thy view
More great than Rome!
Blest Ilithyia! be thou near
In travail to each Roman dame!
Lucina, Genitalis, hear,
Whate'er thy name!
O make our youth to live and grow!
The fathers' nuptial counsels speed,
Those laws that shall on Rome bestow
A plenteous seed!
So when a hundred years and ten
Bring round the cycle, game and song
Three days, three nights, shall charm again
The festal throng.
Ye too, ye Fates, whose righteous doom,
Declared but once, is sure as heaven,
Link on new blessings, yet to come,
To blessings given!
Let Earth, with grain and cattle rife,
Crown Ceres' brow with wreathen corn;
Soft winds, sweet waters, nurse to life
The newly born!
O lay thy shafts, Apollo, by!
Let suppliant youths obtain thine ear!
Thou Moon, fair "regent of the sky,"
Thy maidens hear!
If Rome is yours, if Troy's remains,
Safe by your conduct, sought and found
Another city, other fanes
On Tuscan ground,
For whom, 'mid fires and piles of slain,
AEneas made a broad highway,
Destined, pure heart, with greater gain.
Their loss to pay,
Grant to our sons unblemish'd ways;
Grant to our sires an age of peace;
Grant to our nation power and praise,
And large increase!
See, at your shrine, with victims white,
Prays Venus and Anchises' heir!
O prompt him still the foe to smite,
The fallen to spare!
Now Media dreads our Alban steel,
Our victories land and ocean o'er;
Scythia and Ind in suppliance kneel,
So proud before.
Faith, Honour, ancient Modesty,
And Peace, and Virtue, spite of scorn,
Come back to earth; and Plenty, see,
With teeming horn.
Augur and lord of silver bow,
Apollo, darling of the Nine,
Who heal'st our frame when languors slow
Have made it pine;
Lov'st thou thine own Palatial hill,
Prolong the glorious life of Rome
To other cycles, brightening still
Through time to come!
From Algidus and Aventine
List, goddess, to our grave Fifteen!
To praying youths thine ear incline,
Diana queen!
Thus Jove and all the gods agree!
So trusting, wend we home again,
Phoebus and Dian's singers we,
And this our strain.
NOTES.
BOOK I, ODE 3.
THE ESTRANGING MAIN.
"The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea."
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
And slow Fate quicken'd Death's once halting pace.
The commentators seem generally to connect Necessitas with Leti; I have
preferred to separate them. Necessitas occurs elsewhere in Horace (Book
I, Ode 35, v. 17; Book III, Ode 1, v. 14; Ode 24, v. 6) as an
independent personage, nearly synonymous with Fate, and I do not see
why she should not be represented as accelerating the approach of
Death.
BOOK I, ODE 5.
I have ventured to model my version of this Ode, to some extent, on
Milton's, "the high-water mark," as it has been termed, "which Horatian
translation has attained." I have not, however, sought to imitate his
language, feeling that the attempt would be presumptuous in itself, and
likely to create a sense of incongruity with the style of the other
Odes.
BOOK I, ODE 6.
Who with pared nails encounter youths in fight.
I like Ritter's interpretation of sectis, cut sharp, better than the
common one, which supposes the paring of the nails to denote that the
attack is not really formidable. Sectis will then be virtually
equivalent to Bentley's strictis. Perhaps my translation is not
explicit enough.
BOOK I, ODE 7.
And search for wreaths the olive's rifled bower.
Undique decerptam I take, with Bentley, to mean "plucked
on all hands," i. e. exhausted as a topic of poetical treatment.
He well compares Lucretius, Book I, v. 927--
"Juvatque novas decerpere flores,
Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam
Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musae."
'Tis Teucer leads, 'tis Teucer breathes the wind.
If I have slurred over the Latin, my excuse must be that the precise
meaning of the Latin is difficult to catch. Is Teucer called auspex, as
taking the auspices, like an augur, or as giving the auspices, like a
god? There are objections to both interpretations; a Roman imperator
was not called auspex, though he was attended by an auspex, and was
said to have the auspicia; auspex is frequently used of one who, as we
should say, inaugurates an undertaking, but only if he is a god or a
deified mortal. Perhaps Horace himself oscillated between the two
meanings; his later commentators do not appear to have distinguished
them.
BOOK I, ODE 9.
Since this Ode was printed off, I find that my last stanza bears a
suspicious likeness to the version by "C. S. C." I cannot say whether
it is a case of mere coincidence, or of unconscious recollection; it
certainly is not one of deliberate appropriation. I have only had the
opportunity of seeing his book at distant intervals; and now, on
finally comparing his translations with my own, I find that, while
there are a few resemblances, there are several marked instances of
dissimilarity, where, though we have adopted the same metre, we do not
approach each other in the least.
BOOK I, ODE 15.
And for your dames divide
On peaceful lyre the several parts of song.
I have taken feminis with divides, but it is quite possible that Orelli
may be right in constructing it with grata. The case is really one of
those noticed in the Preface, where an interpretation which would not
commend itself to a commentator may be adopted by a poetical translator
simply as a free rendering.
BOOK I, ODE 27.
Our guest,
Megilla's brother.
There is no warrant in the original for representing this person as a
guest of the company; but the Ode is equally applicable to a tavern
party, where all share alike, and an entertainment where there is a
distinction between hosts and guests.
BOOK I, ODE 28.
I have translated this Ode as it stands, without attempting to decide
whether it is dialogue or monologue. Perhaps the opinion which supposes
it to be spoken by Horace in his own person, as if he had actually
perished in the shipwreck alluded to in Book III, Ode 4, v. 27, "Me...
non exstinxit... Sicula Palinurus unda," deserves more attention than
it has received.
BOOK II, ODE 1.
Methinks I hear of leaders proud.
Horace supposes himself to hear not the leaders themselves, but
Pollio's recitation of their exploits. There is nothing weak in this,
as Orelli thinks. Horace has not seen Pollio's work, but compliments
him by saying that he can imagine what its finest passages will be
like--"I can fancy how you will glow in your description of the great
generals, and of Cato." Possibly "Non indecoro pulvere sordidos" may
refer to the deaths of the republican generals, whom old recollections
would lead Horace to admire. We may then compare Ode 7 of this Book, v.
11--
"Cum fracta virtus, et minaces
Turpe solum tetigere mento,"
where, as will be seen, I agree with Ritter, against Orelli, in
supposing death in battle rather than submission to be meant, though
Horace, writing from a somewhat different point of view, has chosen
there to speak of the vanquished as dying ingloriously.
BOOK II, ODE 3.
Where poplar pale and pine-tree high.
I have translated according to the common reading "Qua pinus ... et
obliquo," without stopping to inquire whether it is sufficiently
supported by MSS. Those who with Orelli prefer "Quo pinus ... quid
obliquo," may substitute--
Know you why pine and poplar high
Their hospitable shadows spread
Entwined? why panting waters try
To hurry down their zigzag bed?
BOOK II, ODE 7.
A man of peace.
Quiritem is generally understood of a citizen with rights undiminished.
I have interpreted it of a civilian opposed to a soldier, as in the
well-known story in Suetonius (Caes. c. 70), where Julius Caesar takes
the tenth legion at their word, and intimates that they are disbanded
by the simple substitution of Quirites for milites in his speech to
them. But it may very well include both.
BOOK II, ODE 13.
In sacred awe the silent dead
Attend on each.
"'Sacro digna silentio:' digna eo silentio quod in sacris
faciendis observatur."--RITTER.
BOOK II, ODE 14.
Not though three hundred bullocks flame
Each year.
I have at last followed Ritter in taking trecenos as loosely put for
365, a steer for each day in the year. The hyperbole, as he says, would
otherwise be too extravagant. And richer spilth the pavement stain.
"Our vaults have wept
With drunken spilth of wine."
SHAKESPEARE, Timon of Athens.
BOOK II, ODE 18.
Suns are hurrying suns a-west,
And newborn moons make speed to meet their end.
The thought seems to be that the rapid course of time, hurrying men to
the grave, proves the wisdom of contentment and the folly of avarice.
My version formerly did not express this, and I have altered it
accordingly, while I have rendered "Novaeque pergunt interire lunae"
closely, as Horace may perhaps have intended to speak of the moons as
hastening to their graves as men do.
Yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'd
Waits you more surely than the wider room
Traced by Death's yet greedier hand.
Fine is the instrumental ablative constructed with destinata, which is
itself an ablative agreeing with aula understood. The rich man looks
into the future, and makes contracts which he may never live to see
executed (v. 17--"Tu secanda marmora Locas sub ipsum funus"); meantime
Death, more punctual than any contractor, more greedy than any
encroaching proprietor, has planned with his measuring line a mansion
of a different kind, which will infallibly be ready when the day
arrives.
BOOK II, ODE 20.
I, whom you call
Your friend, Maecenas.
With Ritter I have rendered according to the interpretation which
makes dilecte Maecenas' address to Horace; but it is a choice of evils.
BOOK III, ODE 1.
And lords of land
Affect the sea.
Terrae of course goes with fastidiosus, not with dominus. Mine is a
loose rendering, not a false interpretation.
BOOK III, ODE 2.
Her robes she keeps unsullied still.
The meaning is not that worth is not disgraced by defeat in contests
for worldly honours, but that the honours which belong to worth are
such as the worthy never fail to attain, such as bring no disgrace
along with them, and such as the popular breath can neither confer nor
resume.
True men and thieves
Neglected Justice oft confounds.
"The thieves have bound the true men."
SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, Act ii. Scene 2;
where see Steevens' note.
BOOK III, ODE 3.
No more the adulterous guest can charm
The Spartan queen.
I have followed Ritter in constructing Lacaenae adulterae as a dative
with splendet; but I have done so as a poetical translator rather than
as a commentator.
BOOK III, ODE 4.
Or if a graver note than, love,
With Phoebus' cittern and his lyre.
I have followed Horace's sense, not his words. I believe, with Ritter,
that the alternative is between the pipe as accompanying the vox acuta,
and the cithara or lyre as accompanying the vox gravis. Horace has
specified the vox acuta, and left the vox gravis to be inferred; I have
done just the reverse.
Me, as I lay on Vultur's steep.
In this and the two following stanzas I have paraphrased Horace, with a
view to bring out what appears to be his sense. There is, I think, a
peculiar force in the word fabulosae, standing as it does at the very
opening of the stanza, in close connection with me, and thus bearing
the weight of all the intervening words till the very end, where its
noun, palumbes, is introduced at last. Horace says in effect, "I, too,
like other poets, have a legend of my infancy." Accordingly I have
thrown the gossip of the country-side into the form of an actual
speech. Whether I am justified in heightening the marvellous by making
the stock-doves actually crown the child, instead of merely laying
branches upon him, I am not so sure; but something more seems to be
meant than the covering of leaves, which the Children in the Wood, in
our own legend, receive from the robin.
Loves the leafy growth
Of Lycia next his native wood.
Some of my predecessors seem hardly to distinguish between the Lyciae
dumeta and the natalem silvam of Delos, Apollo's attachment to both of
which warrants the two titles Delius et Patareus. I knew no better way
of marking the distinction within the compass of a line and a half than
by making Apollo exhibit a preference where Horace speaks of his
likings as co-ordinate.
Strength mix'd with mind is made more strong.
"Mixed" is not meant as a precise translation of temperatam, chastened
or restrained, though "to mix" happens to be one of the shades of
meaning of temperare.
BOOK III, ODE 5.
The fields we spoil'd with corn are green.
The later editors are right in not taking Marte nostro with coli as
well as with populata. As has been remarked to me, the pride of the
Roman is far more forcibly expressed by the complaint that the enemy
have been able to cultivate fields that Rome has ravaged than by the
statement that Roman captives have been employed to cultivate the
fields they had ravaged as invaders. The latter proposition, it is
true, includes the former; but the new matter draws off attention from
the old, and so weakens it.
Who once to faithless foes has knelt.
"Knelt" is not strictly accurate, expressing Bentley's dedidit rather
than the common, and doubtless correct, text, credidit.
And, girt by friends that mourn'd him, sped
* * *
The press of kin he push'd apart.
I had originally reversed amicos and propinquos, supposing it to be
indifferent which of them was used in either stanza. But a friend has
pointed out to me that a distinction is probably intended between the
friends who attended Regulus and the kinsmen who sought to prevent his
going.
BOOK III, ODE 8.
Lay down that load of state-concern.
I have translated generally; but Horace's meaning is special, referring
to Maecenas' office of prefect of the city.
BOOK III, ODE 9.
Buttmann complains of the editors for specifying the interlocutors as
Horace and Lydia, which he thinks as incongruous as if in an English
amoebean ode Collins were to appear side by side with Phyllis. The
remark may be just as affects the Latin, though Ode 19 of the present
Book, and Odes 33 and 36 of Book I, might be adduced to show that
Horace does not object to mixing Latin and Greek names in the same
poem; but it does not apply to a translation, where to the English
reader's apprehension Horace and Lydia will seem equally real, equally
fanciful.
BOOK III, ODE 17.
Lamia was doubtless vain of his pedigree; Horace accordingly banters
him good-humouredly by spending two stanzas out of four in giving him
his proper ancestral designation. To shorten the address by leaving out
a stanza, as some critics and some translators have done, is simply to
rob Horace's trifle of its point.
BOOK III, ODE 23.
There is something harsh in the expression of the fourth stanza of this
Ode in the Latin. Tentare cannot stand without an object, and to
connect it, as the commentators do, with deos is awkward. I was going
to remark that possibly some future Bentley would conjecture certare,
or litare, when I found that certare had been anticipated by Peerlkamp,
who, if not a Bentley, was a Bentleian. But it would not be easy to
account for the corruption, as the fact that the previous line begins
with cervice would rather have led to the change of tentare into
certare than vice versa.
BOOK III, ODE 24.
Let Necessity but drive
Her wedge of adamant into that proud head.
I have translated this difficult passage nearly as it stands, not
professing to decide whether tops of buildings or human heads are
meant. Either is strange till explained; neither seems at present to be
supported by any exact parallel in ancient literature or ancient art.
Necessity with her nails has met us before in Ode 35 of Book I, and
Orelli describes an Etruscan work of art where she is represented with
that cognizance; but though the nail is an appropriate emblem of
fixity, we are apparently not told where it is to be driven. The
difficulty here is further complicated by the following metaphor of the
noose, which seems to be a new and inconsistent image.
BOOK III, ODE 29.
Nor gaze on Tibur, never dried.
With Ritter I have connected semper udum (an interpretation first
suggested by Tate, who turned ne into ut); but I do not press it as the
best explanation of the Latin. The general effect of the stanza is the
same either way.
Those piles, among the clouds at home.
I have understood molem generally of the buildings of Rome, not
specially of Maecenas' tower. The parallel passage in Virg. Aen. i.
421--
"Miratur molem Aeneas, magalia quondam,
Miratur portas strepitumque et strata viarum"--
is in favour of the former view.
What once the flying hour has brought.
I have followed Ritter doubtfully. Compare Virg.
Georg. i. 461,--
"Quid vesper serus vehat."
Shall waft my little boat ashore.
I have hardly brought out the sense of the Latin with sufficient
clearness. Horace says that if adversity comes upon him he shall accept
it, and be thankful for what is left him, like a trader in a tempest,
who, instead of wasting time in useless prayers for the safety of his
goods, takes at once to the boat and preserves his life.
BOOK IV, ODE 2.
And spices strow
Before your train.
I had written "And gifts bestow at every fane;" but Ritter is doubtless
right in explaining dabimus tura of the burning of incense in the
streets during the procession. About the early part of the stanza I am
less confident; but the explanation which makes Antonius take part in
the procession as praetor, the reading adopted being Tuque dum
procedis, is perhaps the least of evils.
BOOK IV, ODE 3.
On soft AEolian airs his fame shall nourish.
Horace evidently means that the scenery of Tibur contributes to the
formation of lyric genius. It is Wordsworth's doctrine in the germ;
though, if the author had been asked what it involved, perhaps he would
not have gone further than Ritter, who resolves it all into the
conduciveness of a pleasant retreat to successful composition.
BOOK IV, ODE 4.
I have deranged the symmetry of the two opening similes, making the
eagle the subject of the sentence in the first, the kid in the second,
an awkwardness which the Latin is able to avoid by its power of
distinguishing cases by inflexion. I trust, however, that it will not
offend an English reader.
Whence in every field
They learned.
Horace seems to allude jokingly to some unseasonable inquiry into the
antiquity of the armour of these Alpine tribes, which had perhaps been
started by some less skilful celebrator of the victory; at the same
time that he gratifies his love of lyrical commonplace by a
parenthetical digression in the style of Pindar.
And watchful potencies unweave
For them the tangled paths of war.
On the whole, Ritter seems right, after Acron, in understanding curae
sagaces of the counsels of Augustus, whom Horace compliments similarly
in the Fourteenth Ode of this Book, as the real author of his step-
son's victories. He is certainly right in giving the stanza to Horace,
not to Hannibal. Even a courtly or patriotic Roman would have shrunk
from the bad taste of making the great historical enemy of Italy
conclude his lamentation over his own and his country's deep sorrow by
a flattering prophecy of the greatness of his antagonist's family.
BOOK IV, ODE 9.
'Twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death,
What difference?
I believe I have expressed Horace's meaning, though he has chosen to
express himself as if the two things compared were dead worthlessness
and uncelebrated worth. By fixing the epithet sepultae to inertiae he
doubtless meant to express that the natural and appropriate fate of
worthlessness was to be dead, buried, and forgotten. But the context
shows that he was thinking of the effect of death and its consequent
oblivion on worth and worthlessness alike, and contending that the poet
alone could remedy the undiscriminating and unjust award of destiny.
Throughout the first half of the Ode, however, Horace has rather failed
to mark the transitions of thought. He begins by assuring himself and,
by implication, those whom he celebrates, of immortality, on the ground
that the greatest poets are not the only poets; he then exchanges this
thought for another, doubtless suggested by it, that the heroes of
poetry are not the only heroes, though the very fact that there have
been uncelebrated heroes is used to show that celebration by a poet is
everything.
Or bear your banners through the fight,
Scattering the foeman's firm array.
It seems, on the whole, simpler to understand this of actual victories
obtained by Lollius as a commander, than of moral victories obtained by
him as a judge. There is harshness in passing abruptly from the
judgment-seat to the battle-field; but to speak of the judgment-seat as
itself the battle-field would, I think, be harsher still.
FINIS.