Monday, 25 June 2012

Horace Odes 1, v is famously untranslatable. Even Milton couldn't make much of it, so what chance does anyone else have? The muse that descends when you're awake at 4 in the morning suggested this version:

There’s a savour of sex in the air –
Some boy’s been enjoying you there
            With pashes and pushes
            Between the rose bushes;
And now you’re re-doing your hair.

When his goldilocks sits on his knees
He’ll be thinking she’s easy to please,
            But your true love, dear Pyrrha,
            Resides in the mirror –
For others you swing like the breeze.

Though zephyrs are filling his sail,
He’ll soon have good reason to wail:
            With fortune deserting
            His heart will be hurting –
A vessel capsized by the gale.

If another should see you and sigh,
I’d look on with a tear in my eye;
            There’s the shine, there’s the sparkle –
            Then comes the debacle.
Too harsh? Let them give you a try.


Those clothes that are hung in the shrine,
Still dripping with seaweed, are mine:
            The god of the ocean
            Has earned my devotion:
He brought me to land – and I’m fine.

If you want all the word-play and double entendres, you'll have to look at the Latin:


Quis multa gracils te puer in rosa
perfusus liquidis urget odoribus
            grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?
            cui flavam religas comam,
simplex munditiis? heu quotiens fidem
mutatosque deos flebit et aspera
            nigris aequora ventis
            emirabitur insolens,
qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,
qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
            sperat, nescius aurae
            fallacis! miseri, quibus
intemptata nites. me tabula sacer
votiva paries indicat uvida
            suspendisse potenti
            vestimenta maris deo.




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