Odes 1.9

Soracte

by Horace

An older man advises a young one to live for the moment and enjoy youth while it lasts. Over the first two stanzas, there are many contrasts and transitions: outside to in; cold to warmth; frozen to flowing; vast and uncontrollable nature to human scale, comfort and intimacy. The second half is a tribute to youth and love. Young Thaliarchus (real or imagined, his name is Greek) must enjoy them while he can. Mount Soracte is twenty-odd miles north of Rome. The poem is on the conventional theme of “carpe diem” (not only “seize” the day, but also “pluck” it like a flower).

Metre: Alcaic

See the blog post with a snow scene by Hiroshige here.

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To scroll the original and English translation of the poem at the same time - tap inside one box to select it and then scroll.

Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus
silvae laborantes geluque
flumina constiterint acuto.

dissolve frigus ligna super foco
large reponens, atque benignius
deprome quadrimum Sabina,
o Thaliarche, merum diota.

permitte divis cetera, qui simul
stravere ventos aequore fervido
deproeliantes, nec cupressi
nec veteres agitantur orni.

quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere et,
quem Fors dierum cunque dabit, lucro
appone, nec dulces amores
sperne puer neque tu choreas,

donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem susurri
composita repetentur hora,

nunc et latentis proditor intimo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
pignusque dereptum lacertis
aut digito male pertinaci.

You see, how Soracte stands white with the deep snow, and how the labouring woods can no longer bear their burden, and the rivers have seized up with the sharp frost. Melt away the cold, piling more logs right across the hearth, pour the four-year wine more generously, Thaliarchus, from the two-eared Sabine jar. Leave the rest to the gods, who all at once have calmed the winds battling on the boiling sea, and the cypresses and the ancient elms are tossed no longer. What may be tomorrow, take care not to ask – whatever kind of day Fortune brings, put it down as profit, and don’t turn down sweet loves and dances while you are young, while there are no grim grey hairs on you in your green prime. Now the training ground and the town squares, and gentle murmurs in the night at assignation time are what you should be after, and the welcome laughter of the hiding girl betraying her presence from her snug corner, and the token snatched from her shoulders or her – supposedly – resisting finger.

`

More Poems by Horace

  1. Diffugere nives
  2. A Farewell to arms
  3. Romulus becomes a God
  4. Locked out
  5. Housman and Horace
  6. Roman values for the new age
  7. Stormy seas
  8. Love a slave-girl? Oh, Xanthias!
  9. Nereus prophesies the Trojan War
  10. Fortuna
  11. Curse you, tree!
  12. Lydia’s tragedy
  13. Gyges’s constancy
  14. Diana and Apollo: a hymn
  15. Licymnia
  16. Neobule
  17. Valgius and Mystes
  18. Horace the peacemaker
  19. Poscimur
  20. Romulus in Heaven
  21. Horace’s Chloe
  22. Here’s to Murena!
  23. Iccius goes soldiering
  24. A prayer to Mercury
  25. Don’t worry, be happy
  26. The pleasures and dangers of wine
  27. A prayer to Venus
  28. Caesar’s safe return
  29. Give me comfort, not riches
  30. Horace’s limitations
  31. Jealousy
  32. Pindar and Augustus
  33. Horace’s wine
  34. Lalage is too young
  35. Horace’s Cleopatra ode
  36. Horace’s monument
  37. Horace’s reverence to Bacchus
  38. Be your age, Chloris!
  39. Don’t trust Barine
  40. Celebrating Neptune’s feast day
  41. Horace rests from his labours
  42. Horace, the wolf and the upright life
  43. The final ode
  44. Some advice for Dellius
  45. The fleeting years slip by
  46. Last love
  47. Pyrrha
  48. Augustus, master of the world
  49. Love lost and found
  50. Tibur or Tarentum: a poet’s dilemma?
  51. Gathering rosebuds: carpe diem
  52. The tug-of-war for Nearchus
  53. Luxury versus the simple life
  54. Wealth should be used, not hoarded
  55. Horace the swan
  56. Mourning for a good man
  57. New temples, new morals
  58. The Golden Mean
  59. Numida’s back
  60. Postumus, the years slip by
  61. A plea for burial
  62. An oath to Maecenas
  63. Glycera
  64. Awe for the Gods
  65. Carpe diem, Sestius
  66. Horace returns to lyric poetry
  67. Lovely mother, lovelier daughter
  68. Courage and decadence: the Regulus ode
  69. Horace welcomes his army comrade
  70. A Prayer to the poetry-God
  71. An invitation to Maecenas
  72. A change of mind
  73. An invocation to the lyre
  74. The country is best
  75. What Roman youth should be
  76. The consolations of wine
  77. Rome: disaster and salvation
  78. Pollio’s histories of civil war
  79. Jupiter’s authority, and Caesar’s
  80. Unrequited love
  81. A garland from the Muses
  82. Horace’s first Ode
  83. Horace’s prayer to a wine-jar
  84. Relief from care
  85. O Fons Bandusiae
    86. View Latin Poems
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