Author: Isaac

New Horace Collection

New Collection of Translations

159 English translations of Horace’s Rectius Vives.

One by Louis Untermeyer, 1919

Licinius, here’s a recipe
To keep you from undue commotion,
Remember that the shore can be
As treacherous as the depths of ocean:

The man who loves the golden mean,
Avoids the squalor of a hovel;
And scorns the palaces, serene
Above the envious ones who grovel.

It is the giant pine that creaks,
It is the tallest towers that tumble;
And it is on the mountain peaks
That lightnings strike and heavens crumble.

The heart forearmed, when times are drear,
Hopes for the best, and in fair weather
Allows itself an hour of fear —
It takes the good and bad together.

Be patient then, and reef your sails;
Equip your courage with endurance.
Thus shall you meet the roaring gales
With laughing wisdom and assurance.

One by Lewis Evelyn Gielgud, 1951

Your ship will steer a straighter course
If not to deepest channels held
And then, before the tempest’s force,
To hug unfriendly coasts compelled.

The man that loves the Golden Mean,
Will neither take a tumble-down
Apartment, nor a mansion seen
With envious eyes by half the Town.

The lightning strikes the highest peaks;
The tallest towers furthest fall;
The wind that flays the forest seeks
The loftiest tree-tops first of all.

Hearts well-conditioned hope in days
Of stress — discount, in plenteous years,
Lean times to come. The scowling face
Of Winter shows, and disappears,

As pleases Heaven. If things today
Go ill, they will amend. Apollo
Unstrings at last his bow, to play
The pleasant tunes the Muses follow.

Be bold of heart, and strong of mind,
When waves run high — but have the wit
When in your wake a following wind
Blows fresh, to trim your sails to it.

Unseen, Unfeared

…sed inprovisa leti
vis rapuit rapietque gentis.
(Horace, II.13)

…but Death
strikes unforeseen the world over.
(Stanley Lombardo, 2018)

…but unforeseen death
All men has reft and will again.
(Alexander Falconer Murison, 1931)

…always Death
Steals up unseen, to lay the peoples low.
(Edward Marsh, 1943)

Unseen, unfeared, destruction’s might
Descends and shall descend again.
(J. S. Blake-Reed, 1944)

…unseen by any man
Death leads, and will lead, races to the night.
(Lord Dunsany, 1947)

…but death’s an ambuscade
That has destroyed the world and shall again.
(James Michie, 1963)

But death’s power, unforeseen till then,
Has snatched, and will, the tribes of men.
(Stuart Lyons, 2007)

We Do Know Something

From W. H. Auden, “Effective Democracy,” May 1939:

…if we take an active part in politics, we must avoid the intellectual’s temptation to be dogmatic. Knowing that the world is always changing, that the truth today becomes the falsehood tomorrow and that the finest constitution we can devise may, in a hundred years, become an engine of tyranny, we must regard all political structures, theories and parties as provisional. But at the same time, we must not turn this into an excuse for doing nothing. We may not know very much, but we do know something, and while we must always be prepared to change our minds, we must act as best we can in the light of what we do know.