Horace: To Pyrrha

WHat slender Youth bedew’d with liquid odours
Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,
Pyrrha for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden Hair,

Plain in thy neatness; O how oft shall he
On Faith and changed Gods complain: and Seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:

Who now enjoyes thee credulous, all Gold,
Who alwayes vacant, alwayes amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindfull. Hapless they

To whom thou untry’d seem’st fair. Me in my vow’d
Picture the sacred wall declares t’ have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.


Quis multa gracilis te puer in Rosa, Rendred almost word for word without Rhyme according to the Latin Measure, as near as the Language will permit. (John Milton)

Horace: To Chloë

YOU shun me, Chloë, wild and shy,
As some stray fawn that seeks its mother
Through trackless woods. If spring winds sigh
It vainly strives its fears to smother.

Its trembling knees assail each other
When lizards stir the brambles dry;—
You shun me, Chloë, wild and shy,
As some stray fawn that seeks its mother.

And yet no Libyan lion I,—
No ravening thing to rend another;
Lay by your tears, your tremors dry,
A husband’s better than a brother;
Nor shun me, Chloë, wild and shy,
As some stray fawn that seeks its mother.


Odes I 23. Translation by Austin Dobson (1840–1921).

Horace: Persian Fopperies

BOY, I hate their empty shows,
Persian garlands I detest,
Bring not me the late-bloom rose
Lingering after all the rest:

Plainer myrtle pleases me
Thus outstretched beneath my vine,
Myrtle more becoming thee,
Waiting with thy master’s wine.


Translation by William Cowper.