Horace celebrates his escape from a life-threatening accident and invites his powerful patron, Maecenas, to take a break from his public responsibilities.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
See the illustrated blog post here.
Rainer Maria Rilke uses the swan to make a point about the difficulty of life and the serenity of death. Agree or disagree? Hear the German read by Tatjana Pisarski and follow in translation here.
Horace uses the metaphor of a ship in stormy seas to express his hope that Rome will win through to safety in a time of danger. Hear the Ode performed in the original Latin and follow in a new English translation here.
The illustration, by Rembrandt, is of Christ in the storm on the Sea of Galilee. If you happen to see this painting anywhere, please tell the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum in Boston – it was stolen from them in 1990 and has not been returned.
Yeats shows classical and Byzantine influences in a poem that expresses sadness at growing old but asserts the power of mysticism and intellect. He may have had this 6th century portrait of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in mind when making his references to golden mosaics and drowsy Emperors. Read the poem here.
Psychology, Homeric slang and literary reference at a dinner from Proust’s masterpiece, the point being that, in those days (around 1890), every educated person knew something about the classics. Today things have changed, and one of the purposes of Pantheon Poets is to offer non-classicists a way to fill the gap.
Today’s new poem is a sonnet on this famous Florentine church with a plain exterior but a beautiful interior. Read it here.
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