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. Footnote: Lethe is one of the rivers of Hades or Hell; lethal derives from Lethe. Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae; mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas flumina praetereunt; Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet ducere nuda choros. Inmortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum quae rapit hora diem. Frigora mitescunt zephyris, ver proterit aestas interitura, simul pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox bruma recurrit iners. Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae; nos ubi decidimus, quo pius Aeneas, quo Tullus dives et Ancus, pulvis et umbra sumus. Quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae tempora di superi? Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico quae dederis animo. Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos fecerit arbitria, non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te restituet pietas; Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum liberat Hippolytum, nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro vincula Pirithoo. Courtesy of antiquitatem.com Horace (65 BC – 8 BC). The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. John Conington. trans. London. George Bell and Sons. 1882.
2 Comments
Josef Ketzer
11/8/2023 12:19:30 pm
"Si hortum et bibliothecam habes...", is this from Horace or another guy?
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