Two contrasting Victorian takes on death – fulfilment and release as a lark sings over a gorgeous sunset, or the murderous “Ruffian on the stair”?
Read the two very different poetic visions here.
Tennyson combines his admiration for Milton’s poetry with his love of ancient poetry, and in particular his love of Alcaics, the Greek metre that Horace used for his loftiest themes in the Odes. You can decide for yourself how far the experiment succeeds, and use the links to compare Tennyson’s poem to some of Horace’s poems in the same metre, here.
The English poet John Westbrook turns his attention from classical subjects to more contemporary issues: world population and the environment. See his “7,000,000,001” here.
The illustration by Emil Keyser is entitled “Expulsion from the Garden of Eden”.
A E Housman was a professor of Latin as well as a famous poet of the life of the English countryside. Because of these twin talents, his translation of Horace’s “Diffugere nives” (Ode 4.7) captures its sentiment and mood perfectly although he uses English poetic techniques and convention which could hardly be more different than those of Latin poetry. All the more reason to encounter Latin poetry in the original, with a reading and a translation, at Pantheon Poets.
In the illustration, Theseus and Pirithous, whose legendary friendship is referred to at the end of the poem, rid the land of robbers and liberate abducted women.
See and hear Horace’s original alongside Housman’s translation here.
As Horace brings the final book of his Odes to an end, an idealised Roman family of the future gathers to sing Augustus’s praises and give thanks for the peace and the imperial power that he has brought to Rome.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Cynthia is back from the grave, on an excursion with someone who looks like a rival for Propertius to visit a festival where a fearsome snake is to be fed by maidens in honour of Juno – and when she returns and catches Propertius up to no good, she gives him good reason to regret it. But in the preceding poem she was dead and buried: what is going on?
Find a suggestion, hear an extract from the original Latin and follow the whole poem in parallel text here.
Snake photo by Holger Krisp: see the photo credits page for licensing details.
Cynthia is no more, but as Propertius lies in bed, her ghost appears to give him a trademark dressing-down. But is all as it seems? Perhaps we will find out in Propertius’s next poem…
Hear an extract in the original Latin and follow the poem in English with a parallel text here.
At fifty or so, Horace says he is free from love – but in his dreams, he still pursues the elusive Ligurinus.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The archer-God Apollo, flushed with his victory over Python, the monstrous serpent, has poked fun at Cupid’s bow, suggesting that such weapons are best left to the grown-ups. Cupid takes his revenge by inducing Daphne, a huntress-nymph, to renounce love altogether, and then making Apollo fall for her, head over heels.
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.