New Collection of Horace Translations

167 English Translations of Horace’s Eheu Fugaces.

But one morning the old man, standing before the blackboard, his hands clutching his coat, — picture him with a mild and venerable and kindly face, spectacled, his big domed head scholastically bald above a fringe of close gray curls; clerically dressed in black, low-collared, white-tied; his eyes rather dim and vague behind his glasses, gazing peacefully: there he is! — one morning he stood in front of us at the beginning of the lesson, and instead of putting somebody on to construe he waited, he stared over our heads; and then he broke out in a gentle mournful chant upon the opening words of our ode. He seemed to be saying them to himself — he knew them by heart. Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume — he had a tuneful and flexible voice, and he threw into it a pensive lament as he dwelt upon the repeated name. Postume — Postume — oh, how time flies, how helplessly we see it vanish, how soon we are faced by the assault of age! He chanted the words very musically and appealingly — yet not quite seriously either, not sentimentally, but rather as if he liked to join company with an old friend, old popular Horace, in a plaintive strain that he did n’t mean very seriously; for these regrets and laments, they belong to the smooth philosophy of an honest poet, comfortable enough in his worldly wisdom — and a companionable old poet, so life-seasoned, so familiar to a scholar who has known him by heart for fifty years. There is a touch of humor in their relation; Horace does n’t pretend to be perfectly solemn, and the scholar drops easily into his mood; though after all it is true, sadly true, that time is fleeting and death is tameless — quite true enough to set an old man agreeably musing and mooning as he chants the words. He had forgotten our presence; he repeated the whole ode through to the end. (Percy Lubbock, “A Lesson of Horace,” Atlantic Montly, Dec. 1924)

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.