Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Horace Ode 1.9

You see how Soracte stands white with deep snow and now the laboring trees do not bear their burden and the rivers halted with sharp ice. Melt the cold, heaping logs plentifully over the hearth and more generously draw off the four year old Sabine wine from the jug, Thaliarchus. Leave the rest to the gods, (who) once they calm the winds battling with the roiling water, neither cypresses not ancient ash trees are bothered. Do not ask what will be tomorrow, and put down as gain whatever of days Chance will give, as a boy spurn neither sweet loves nor the dances, while gloomy white hair is gone from green (youth). Now both the field and the plazas and the soft whispers at nightfall at the appointed hour are to be sought, now both the pleasing laugh from farthest corner, betrayer of the hidden girl, and the pledge stolen from arms or finger badly resisting.

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