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.

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More Poems by Horace

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