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Don Quixote
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Topic: Ancient Roman Poetry, Drama and Literature Posted: 07-Mar-2012 at 18:18
Horace
yet wine that I sealed myself, and laid up
in a Grecian jar, when you dear Maecenas,
flower of knighthood,
received the theatre’s applause, so your native
river-banks, and, also, the Vatican Hill,
together returned that praise again, to you,
in playful echoes.
Then, drink Caecubum, and the juice of the grape
crushed in Campania’s presses, my cups are
unmixed with what grows on Falernian vines,
or Formian hills.
Edited by Don Quixote - 07-Mar-2012 at 18:19
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Posted: 10-Mar-2012 at 14:26
Horace:
and, you boys, sing in praise, of long-haired Apollo,
and of Latona, deeply
loved by all-conquering Jove.
You girls, she who enjoys the streams and the green leaves
of the groves that clothe the cool slopes of Algidus,
or dark Erymanthian
trees, or the woods of green Cragus.
You boys, sounding as many praises, of Tempe
and Apollo’s native isle Delos, his shoulder
distinguished by his quiver,
and his brother Mercury’s lyre.
He’ll drive away sad war, and miserable famine,
the plague too, from our people and Caesar our prince,
and, moved by all your prayers,
send them to Persians and Britons.
Edited by Don Quixote - 10-Mar-2012 at 14:26
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Posted: 11-Mar-2012 at 21:30
Horace
has no need, dear Fuscus, for Moorish javelins,
nor a bow and a quiver, fully loaded
with poisoned arrows,
whether his path’s through the sweltering Syrtes,
or through the inhospitable Caucasus,
or makes its way through those fabulous regions
Hydaspes waters.
While I was wandering, beyond the boundaries
of my farm, in the Sabine woods, and singing
free from care, lightly-defended, of my Lalage,
a wolf fled from me:
a monster not even warlike Apulia
nourishes deep in its far-flung oak forests,
or that Juba’s parched Numidian land breeds,
nursery of lions.
Set me down on the lifeless plains, where no trees
spring to life in the burning midsummer wind,
that wide stretch of the world that’s burdened by mists
and a gloomy sky:
set me down in a land denied habitation,
where the sun’s chariot rumbles too near the earth:
I’ll still be in love with my sweetly laughing,
sweet talking Lalage.
Edited by Don Quixote - 11-Mar-2012 at 21:37
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Posted: 13-Mar-2012 at 19:32
Horace:
searching the trackless hills for its frightened mother,
not without aimless terror
of the pathless winds, and the woods.
For if the coming of spring begins to rustle
among the trembling leaves, or if a green lizard
pushes the brambles aside,
then it trembles in heart and limb.
And yet I’m not chasing after you to crush you
like a fierce tiger, or a Gaetulian lion:
stop following your mother,
now, you’re prepared for a mate.
Edited by Don Quixote - 13-Mar-2012 at 19:34
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Posted: 14-Mar-2012 at 13:31
Horace:
of so dear a life? Melpomene, teach me, Muse,
a song of mourning, you, whom the Father granted
a clear voice, the sound of the lyre.
Does endless sleep lie heavy on Quintilius,
now? When will Honour, and unswerving Loyalty,
that is sister to Justice, and our naked Truth,
ever discover his equal?
Many are the good men who weep for his dying,
none of them, Virgil, weep more profusely than you.
Piously, you ask the gods for him, alas, in vain:
not so was he given to us.
Even if you played on the Thracian lyre, listened
to by the trees, more sweetly than Orpheus could,
would life then return, to that empty phantom,
once Mercury, with fearsome wand,
who won’t simply re-open the gates of Fate
at our bidding, has gathered him to the dark throng?
It is hard: but patience makes more tolerable
whatever wrong’s to be righted.
Edited by Don Quixote - 14-Mar-2012 at 13:32
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Posted: 15-Mar-2012 at 23:56
Horace:
beating your shutters, with blow after blow, or
stealing away your sleep, while the door sits tight,
hugging the threshold,
yet was once known to move its hinges, more than
readily. You’ll hear, less and less often now:
‘Are you sleeping, Lydia, while your lover
dies in the long night?’
Old, in your turn, you’ll bemoan coarse adulterers,
as you tremble in some deserted alley,
while the Thracian wind rages, furiously,
through the moonless nights,
while flagrant desire, libidinous passion,
those powers that will spur on a mare in heat,
will storm all around your corrupted heart, ah,
and you’ll complain,
that the youths, filled with laughter, take more delight
in the green ivy, the dark of the myrtle,
leaving the withering leaves to this East wind,
winter’s accomplice.
Edited by Don Quixote - 15-Mar-2012 at 23:58
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Posted: 16-Mar-2012 at 12:02
Horace:
to the winds, to blow over the Cretan Sea,
untroubled by whoever he is, that king
of the icy Arctic shores we’re afraid of,
or whatever might terrify the Armenians.
O Sweet Muse, that joys in fresh fountains,
weave them together all the bright flowers,
weave me a garland for my Lamia.
Without you there’s no worth in my tributes:
it’s fitting that you, that all of your sisters,
should immortalise him with new strains
of the lyre, with the Lesbian plectrum.
Edited by Don Quixote - 16-Mar-2012 at 12:05
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Posted: 17-Mar-2012 at 23:11
Horace:
only suits Thracians: forget those barbarous
games, and keep modest Bacchus away
from all those bloodthirsty quarrels of yours.
The Persian scimitar’s quite out of keeping
with the wine and the lamplight: my friends restrain
all that impious clamour, and rest
on the couches, lean back on your elbows.
So you want me to drink up my share, as well,
of the heavy Falernian? Then let’s hear
Opuntian Megylla’s brother tell
by what wound, and what arrow, blessed, he dies.
Does your will waver? I’ll drink on no other
terms. Whatever the passion rules over you,
it’s not with a shameful fire it burns,
and you always sin with the noblest
of lovers. Whoever it is, ah, come now,
let it be heard by faithful ears – oh, you wretch!
What a Charybdis you’re swimming in,
my boy, you deserve a far better flame!
What magician, with Thessalian potions,
what enchantress, or what god could release you?
Caught by the triple-formed Chimaera,
even Pegasus could barely free you.
Edited by Don Quixote - 17-Mar-2012 at 23:12
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Posted: 18-Mar-2012 at 21:57
Horace:
in a small mound of meagre earth near the Matinian shore,
and it’s of no use to you in the least,
that you, born to die, have explored the celestial houses
crossed, in spirit, the rounds of the sky.
Tantalus, Pelop’s father, died too, a guest of the gods,
and Tithonus took off to the heavens,
Minos gained entry to great Jupiter’s secrets, Tartarus
holds Euphorbus, twice sent to Orcus,
though he bore witness, carrying his shield there, to Trojan
times,
and left nothing more behind, for black Death,
but his skin and his bones, and that certainly made him,
Archytas,
to your mind, no trivial example
of Nature and truth. But there’s still one night that awaits
us all,
and each, in turn, makes the journey of death.
The Furies deliver some as a spectacle for cruel Mars,
the greedy sea’s the sailor’s ruin:
the funerals of the old, and the young, close ranks
together,
and no one’s spared by cruel Proserpine.
Me too, the south wind, Notus, swift friend of setting
Orion,
drowned deep in Illyrian waters.
O, sailor, don’t hesitate, from spite, to grant a little treacherous
sand, to my unburied bones and skull.
So that, however the east wind might threaten the Italian
waves, thrashing the Venusian woods,
you’ll be safe, yourself, and rich rewards will flow from
the source,
from even-handed Jupiter, and from
Neptune, who is the protector of holy Tarentum. Are you
indifferent to committing a wrong
that will harm your innocent children hereafter? Perhaps
a need for justice, and arrogant
disdain, await you, too: don’t let me be abandoned here
my prayers unanswered: no offering
will absolve you. Though you hurry away, it’s a brief delay:
three scattered handfuls of earth will free you.
Edited by Don Quixote - 18-Mar-2012 at 21:58
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Posted: 19-Mar-2012 at 19:59
Horace:
at Arabian riches, and preparing
for bitter war on unbeaten kings
of Saba, weaving bonds for those dreadful
Medes? What barbaric virgin
will be your slave, when you’ve murdered her lover?
What boy, from the palace, with scented
hair, will handle your wine-cups, one taught
by his father’s bow how to manage eastern
arrows? Who’ll deny, now, that rivers can flow
backwards, to the summits of mountains,
and Tiber reverse the course of his streams,
when you, who gave promise of much better things,
are intent on changing Panaetius’s
noble books, the school of Socrates,
for a suit of Iberian armour?
Edited by Don Quixote - 19-Mar-2012 at 20:00
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Posted: 20-Mar-2012 at 17:57
Horace:
spurn your beloved Cyprus, and summoned
by copious incense, come to the lovely shrine
of my Glycera.
And let that passionate boy of yours, Cupid,
and the Graces with loosened zones, and the Nymphs,
and Youth, less lovely without you, hasten here,
and Mercury too.
Edited by Don Quixote - 20-Mar-2012 at 17:57
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Posted: 22-Mar-2012 at 04:09
Horace:
What does he pray for as he pours out the wine
from the bowl? Not for the rich harvests
of fertile Sardinia, nor the herds,
(they’re delightful), of sunlit Calabria,
not for India’s gold or its ivory,
nor fields our silent Liris’s stream
carries away in the calm of its flow.
Let those that Fortune allows prune the vines,
with a Calenian knife, so rich merchants
can drink their wine from a golden cup,
wine they’ve purchased with Syrian goods,
who, dear to the gods, three or four times yearly,
revisit the briny Atlantic, unscathed.
I browse on olives, and chicory
and simple mallow. Apollo, the son
of Latona, let me enjoy what I have,
and, healthy in body and mind, as I ask,
live an old age not without honour,
and one not lacking the art of the lyre.
Edited by Don Quixote - 22-Mar-2012 at 04:09
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Posted: 22-Mar-2012 at 17:14
Horace
idle things with you in the shade, that will live,
for a year or more, come and utter a song
now, of Italy:
you were first tuned by Alcaeus of Lesbos,
a man daring in war, yet still, amongst arms,
or after he’d moored his storm-driven boat
on a watery shore,
he sang of the Muses, Bacchus, and Venus
that boy of hers, Cupid, that hangs around her,
and that beautiful Lycus, with his dark eyes
and lovely dark hair.
O tortoiseshell, Phoebus’s glory, welcome
at the feasts of Jupiter, the almighty,
O sweet comfort and balm of our troubles, heal,
if I call you true!
Edited by Don Quixote - 22-Mar-2012 at 17:15
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Posted: 23-Mar-2012 at 11:02
Horace:
your cruel Glycera, and don’t keep on singing
those wretched elegies, or ask why, trust broken,
you’re outshone by a younger man.
Lovely Lycoris, the narrow-browed one, is on fire
with love for Cyrus, Cyrus leans towards bitter
Pholoë, but does in the wood are more likely
to mate with Apulian wolves,
than Pholoë to sin with some low-down lover.
So Venus has it, who delights in the cruel
game of mating unsuitable bodies and minds,
under her heavy yoke of bronze.
I, myself, when a nobler passion was called for,
was held in the charming bonds of Myrtale,
that freed slave, more bitter than Hadria’s waves
that break in Calabria’s bay.
Edited by Don Quixote - 23-Mar-2012 at 11:03
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Posted: 24-Mar-2012 at 13:27
Horace:
a scant and infrequent adorer of gods,
now I’m forced to set sail and return,
to go back to the paths I abandoned.
For Jupiter, Father of all of the gods,
who generally splits the clouds with his lightning,
flashing away, drove thundering horses,
and his swift chariot, through the clear sky,
till the dull earth, and the wandering rivers,
and Styx, and dread Taenarus’ hateful headland,
and Atlas’s mountain-summits shook.
The god has the power to replace the highest
with the lowest, bring down the famous, and raise
the obscure to the heights. And greedy Fortune
with her shrill whirring, carries away
the crown and delights in setting it, there.
Edited by Don Quixote - 24-Mar-2012 at 13:31
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Posted: 25-Mar-2012 at 23:12
Horace:
always ready to lift up our mortal selves,
from humble position, or alter
proud triumphs to funeral processions,
the poor farmer, in the fields, courts your favour
with anxious prayers: you, mistress of ocean,
the sailor who cuts the Carpathian
Sea, in a Bithynian sailing boat:
you, the fierce Dacian, wandering Scythian,
cities, and peoples, and warlike Latium,
mothers of barbarous kings, tyrants,
clothed in their royal purple, all fear you,
in case you demolish the standing pillar
with a careless foot, or the tumultuous crowd
incite the peaceful: ‘To arms, to arms’,
and shatter the supreme authority.
Grim Necessity always treads before you,
and she’s carrying the spikes and the wedges
in her bronze hand, and the harsh irons
and the molten lead aren’t absent either.
Hope cultivates you, and rarest Loyalty,
her hands bound in sacred white, will not refuse
her friendship when you, their enemy,
desert the great houses plunged in mourning.
But the disloyal mob, and the perjured whores
vanish, and friends scatter when they’ve drunk our wine
to the lees, unequal to bearing
the heavy yoke of all our misfortunes.
Guard our Caesar who’s soon setting off again
against the earth’s far-off Britons, and guard
the fresh young levies, who’ll scare the East
in those regions along the Red Sea’s shores.
Alas, the shame of our scars and wickedness,
and our dead brothers. What has our harsh age spared?
What sinfulness have we left untried?
What have the young men held their hands back from,
in fear of the gods? Where are the altars they’ve left
alone? O may you remake our blunt weapons
on fresh anvils so we can turn them
against the Scythians and the Arabs.
Edited by Don Quixote - 25-Mar-2012 at 23:16
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Posted: 27-Mar-2012 at 01:23
Horace:
With music, and incense, and blood
of a bullock, delight in placating the gods
that guarded our Numida well,
who’s returned safe and sound, from the farthest West, now,
showering a host of kisses
on every dear friend, but on none of us more than
lovely Lamia, remembering
their boyhood spent under the self-same master,
their togas exchanged together.
Don’t allow this sweet day to lack a white marker,
no end to the wine jars at hand,
no rest for our feet in the Salian fashion,
Don’t let wine-heavy Damalis
conquer our Bassus in downing the Thracian draughts.
Don’t let our feast lack for roses,
or the long-lasting parsley, or the brief lilies:
we’ll all cast our decadent eyes
on Damalis, but Damalis won’t be parted
from that new lover of hers she’s
clasping, more tightly than the wandering ivy.
Edited by Don Quixote - 27-Mar-2012 at 01:24
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Posted: 28-Mar-2012 at 00:26
Horace:
to beat the earth with unfettered feet, the time
to set out the gods’ sacred couches,
my friends, and prepare a Salian feast.
It would have been wrong, before today, to broach
the Caecuban wines from out the ancient bins,
while a maddened queen was still plotting
the Capitol’s and the empire’s ruin,
with her crowd of deeply-corrupted creatures
sick with turpitude, she, violent with hope
of all kinds, and intoxicated
by Fortune’s favour. But it calmed her frenzy
that scarcely a single ship escaped the flames,
and Caesar reduced the distracted thoughts, bred
by Mareotic wine, to true fear,
pursuing her close as she fled from Rome,
out to capture that deadly monster, bind her,
as the sparrow-hawk follows the gentle dove
or the swift hunter chases the hare,
over the snowy plains of Thessaly.
But she, intending to perish more nobly,
showed no sign of womanish fear at the sword,
nor did she even attempt to win
with her speedy ships to some hidden shore.
And she dared to gaze at her fallen kingdom
with a calm face, and touch the poisonous asps
with courage, so that she might drink down
their dark venom, to the depths of her heart,
growing fiercer still, and resolving to die:
scorning to be taken by hostile galleys,
and, no ordinary woman, yet queen
no longer, be led along in proud triumph.
Edited by Don Quixote - 28-Mar-2012 at 00:27
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Posted: 29-Mar-2012 at 23:57
Horace:
garlands twined around lime-tree bark displease me:
forget your chasing, to find all the places
where late roses fade.
You’re eager, take care, that nothing enhances
the simple myrtle: it’s not only you that
it graces, the servant, but me as I drink,
beneath the dark vine.
This was the last poem from Horace's "Odes"; I have to find something else to start from tomorrow on.
Edited by Don Quixote - 30-Mar-2012 at 00:01
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Posted: 01-Apr-2012 at 08:21
Aeneid, 428-433 Aeneas wakes up to see the Greeks ravaging his city Insane, I seize my weapons. There's no sense in weapons, yet my spirit burns to gather a band for battle, to rush out against the citadel with my companions. Rage and anger drive my mind. My only thought: how fine a thing it is to die in arms.
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