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I Vides ut alta stet niue candidum
Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus
siluae laborantes geluque
flumina constiterint acuto?
5 II Dissolue frigus ligna super foco
large reponens atque benignius
deprome quadrimum Sabina,
o Thaliarche, merum diota.
III Permitte diuis cetera, qui simul
10 strauere uentos aequore feruido
deproeliantis, nec cupressi
nec ueteres agitantur orni.
IV Quid sit futurum cras fuge quaerere et
quem Fors dierum cumque dabit lucro
15 appone, nec dulcis amores
sperne puer neque tu choreas,
V donec uirenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et Campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem susurri
20 composita repetantur hora,
VI nunc et latentis proditor intimo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
pignusque dereptum lacertis
aut digito male pertinaci. |
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(I) Do you see how Soracte stands white with high-piled snow, and the labouring
woods no longer sustain their burden, and the streams have frozen to sharp ice?
(II) Dissolve the cold: put logs on the hearth in large measure and more
generously draw off the four-year-old wine, Thaliarchus, from its Sabine jar. (III)
Leave everything else to the gods: as soon as they have laid low the winds battling
on the tossing sea, neither the cypresses are shaken nor the old ash-trees. (IV)
Forbear to ask what will happen tomorrow, and whatever day Fortune will give
you, set it down as gain, and do not spurn the pleasures of love nor dancing while
you are young, (V) as long as your green youth is untouched by sulky whiteness.
Now seek the Campus and the squares and soft whisperings before nightfall at the
appointed hour, (VI) now seek the welcome laughter of a girl which betrays her
as she hides in a secret corner, and the pledge pulled off from her
arms or her scarcely resisting finger. |
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This ode, written more than two thousand years ago in a language now long extinct, stands at a far greater historical distance from the modern reader than Baudelaire's "Spleen" poem, written in the previous century in a language that is still spoken in more or less the same form. With Horace it is even more apparent than with Baudelaire that understanding is impossible without historical knowledge (including historical knowledge of the |
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