Horace -- 3 Odes
Translated by David Lake
I.4
Soft winds of spring are loosening winter’s frost;
long laid-up boats are hauled down to the shore;
for herd and plowman, stall and fire have lost
their spell, as the white fields turn green once more.
The gods keep spring, too: while the moon hangs low
Venus leads her old dance; the Graces merge
in the Nymphs’ round; and Vulcan soon will go
visiting his Cyclops at their thunderous forge.
Now for us mortals also is it time,
due time to pluck green garlands for our heads,
or soft earth’s flowers; to choose a kid or lamb
for sacrifice to Faunus in the glades.
Death, pallid democrat, with equal tread
kicks at the doors of hovels and high towers;
short life mocks long-term plans, my wealthy friend,
and shades of legend, haunting your bright hours,
wait on your last night journey: when you reach
Hades’ poor hall, no more shall the bones’ throw
make you a king of revels, nor will you see
your young love, who now sets all hearts aglow.
I.9
See how Soracte, white with high-packed snow
stands tall, while the strained woods can hardly bear
their smothering load, and streams in the bitter air
halted are flint, cold linking floe to floe.
Dissolve our frost, come heap up blocks of char
and wood till the fire blazes, bring us wine,
friend Thaliarchus, four years old Sabine
unmixed and potent from its native jar.
Leave all else to the gods: for when they’ve felled
the quarrelling winds upon the boiling seas,
on shore calm settles on the cypress trees,
old ashes’ agitations soon are quelled.
What may tomorrow bring, and all its chances?
Run from such questions: every new sunrise
enter as credit; and do not despise
while you are young, sweet spring of love and dances,
while your green time’s far distant still from sour
white age. Then go and saunter in the square
or Campus, for you know what whispers there
are heard, and meetings planned at twilight hour,
when from the deepest doorway black with shade
a pleasant tinkle of light girlish laughter
reveals that what her unseen fellow’s after
will, like her presence, quickly be betrayed.
II.3
Hold your mind steady when the way is hard,
remember, and not otherwise when high
fortune gives you good things, see you avoid
unrestrained joy, Dellius who will die
whether you pass the life you have in gloom
or whether every feast-day you recline
in some secluded meadow’s grassy nook
and drink your fill of best Falernian wine.
Why do the tall pine and white poplar blend
branches in welcoming shade if not to invite
us human guests? and to what other end
do fleeting streams lap banks, but our delight?
Here send for perfume, wine, and too-brief flowers,
the soon-dropped blossoms of the lovely rose,
while wealth and youth and the three sister powers’
black threads allow – your time’s too short to lose.
You’ll leave your bought estate, your pasture tract,
town house and villa washed by Tiber there:
you’ll leave them all, and all the wealth you’ve stacked
up in a heap will tumble – to your heir.
It’ll be the same, whether you trace your line
from some high king of legend, or draw breath
in pain a pauper, naked under the sky:
we’re every one marked victims of pitiless Death.
All herded down one road we go, each man
has his name in the urn, and late or sooner
out jumps the black ball, everlasting ban,
ticket to nowhere in the one-way schooner.