Horace C. 1.9

By now you’ve seen it: how candescent snow

has stilled Soracte’s peak, and how the trees

have let the burden of their labours go,

how ice hinders the river’s flow.

Go put a brittle log upon the fire,

dissolve the cold, uncork a long-stored wine;

Yes, right now wants four-winters-aged Sabine.

And Felix? Pour with both your hands this time?

All else is chance, so leave it to the gods.

Those impresarios will strew the winds,

or beat the fervid sea till nothing stirs

the boughs of cypresses and mountain firs.

What we must do, let’s do it later on.

Let’s call the new days Fate gives us our lucre;

place fixation on love, and love of fervour,

and seek out sweet outbursts of song, so long

as our life’s calendar remains in May.

There’s muffled laughter in the other room.

The city’s bustling. Night’s erasing day.

The hour’s right—she’ll take you arm-in-arm.

Latine

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
deproeliantis, nec cupressi
nec veteres agitantur orni.

quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere et
quem Fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro
adpone nec dulcis amores
sperne puer neque tu choreas,

donec virenti canities abest
morosa. nunc et campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem susurri
conposita repetantur hora,

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