Odes 2.20

Horace the swan

Horace signed off his first book of Odes with a final poem calling for a restorative drink in the shade: this last poem of his second book stakes a claim to literary immortality. That sounds grand, but does he have his tongue half in his cheek? There is something incongruous about his scaly legs as he transforms into a swan, and the Gauls and Spaniards that he imagines poring over his work, but the mood is hard to gauge with confidence over a gap of twenty centuries.

Metre: Alcaic.

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Non usitata nec tenui ferar
penna biformis per liquidum aethera
vates neque in terris morabor
longius invidiaque maior

urbis relinquam. non ego, pauperum
sanguis parentum, non ego, quem vocas.
dilecte Maecenas, obibo
nec Stygia cohibebor unda.

iam iam residunt cruribus asperae
pelles et album mutor in alitem
superne nascunturque leves
per digitos umerosque plumae.

iam Daedaleo notior Icaro
visam gementis litora Bospori
Syrtisque Gaetulas canorus
ales Hyperboreosque campos.

me Colchus et qui dissimulat metum
Marsae cohortis Dacus et ultimi
noscent Geloni, me peritus
discet Hiber Rhodanique potor.

absint inani funere neniae
luctusque turpes et querimoniae;
conpesce clamorem ac sepulcri
mitte supervacuos honores.

Poet and prophet, it will be no commonplace or flimsy wing on which I will be carried in double form through the flowing air; I will not linger on the Earth too long, but, transcending envy, will leave the cities of the world behind. I, a child of poor parents, I, who [come when] you call, my dearest Maecenas, shall not die, and shall not be bounded by the waters of the Styx. Already, already the skin of my thighs shrinks and grows rougher and I am transformed into a white bird; higher up, smooth feathers are growing along my fingers and my shoulders. Soon, more famous than Icarus, Daedalus’s son, as a melodious bird I shall see the shores of the roaring Bosphorus, the sandy shoals of Gaetulia and the land of the Hyperboreans. The Colchian shall know me, and the Dacian, who feigns fear in his Marsian troop, and the Gelonians at the end of the Earth; the Spaniard and the drinker of the Rhone shall learn me by heart. Let there be no dirges at my empty funeral, or squalid grief and lamentations; do not call out [my name for the last time]; do not bother with tributes for my tomb that will be surplus to requirements.

More Poems by Horace

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