Laudator Temporis Acti

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958), Portrait of Horace (London: Sheed & Ward, 1947), p. 18:

The farm at Venusia was a perfect setting for the childhood of a poet. It had only a few acres of land, and they were not very productive. But it was from this very fact that Horace drew some of the grist for his poetic mill. It was here, for instance, that he learned how character without principles may be likened to a neglected field, which is speedily overrun by bracken and will have to be cleansed by fire. It was here that he found the little parable of the bill-hook which cuts down the good with the bad. Here also he saw the dangerous bull with the hay on its horns, as in his third [sic, actually fourth] satire. It was here, in the farmyard, that he saw the hound barking at the horns and empty skin of a deer. It was here, probably, that he heard his father refuting that notion of the Stoics that all sins are equally wicked. The theft of his fresh young cabbages did not matter so much as that of his Lares (the little images of his household gods). It was here, certainly, that he learned something about plain living and high thinking. Moreover, there was a world of beauty around him—mountain and rushing river and murmuring forest; and, within his own narrow borders, the boy possessed one immense tract which is often forgotten. He owned absolutely everything, from where the seeds were sown up to the sky, and that is a considerable kingdom.

Id., pp. 20-21:

It was on the farm at Venusia that, as English children learn about Puck, Horace became acquainted with Faunus, the friendly spirit of the countryside, who protected flocks and herds. As a child, he had seen the peasants, in their gayest holiday colours, bringing gifts of flowers and fruit, or sacrificing a firstling of the flock. He had seen the smoke rising from the little altar of Faunus at the field's edge, while the great white oxen, relieved of the yoke, lay breathing at ease in the shadow of the dark ilex, and the village girls clapped their hands for the ploughmen dancing in time on an earth no longer rebellious, and all the meadows around them made ready for Spring. This was a memory that came to life many years later in one of the most beautiful of his poems, the prayer to Faunus, which is so instinct with the feeling of the old Italian piety. There is gaiety in it, but there is also seriousness, and a note which is not often found in Horace—a note of tenderness. It was induced here, surely, by the memory of his native fields and the associations of his boyhood. I have attempted to render it in the original Sapphic metre; and, though only four words are given to the exultation of the ploughman over his old enemy ("ploughmen dance, on earth!") they may be nearer to the intention of Horace than the eight or ten with which prose translations have sometimes replaced the terse Latin. It is often said that the effect of Latin quantitative verse cannot be reproduced in Enghsh. But I think it can, on one condition. It cannot be done by ignoring the difference between quantity and stress; but it can be done by an order of words in which the natural stress of English falls where, in the Latin metre, the long quantitative syllable would demand it and, so far as possible, choosing words in which those stressed syllables are also "long:"

PRAYER TO FAUNUS

(Book III, Ode 18)

Faunus, fleet-foot lover of flying wood-nymphs,
Turn, on tiptoe; enter my sunlit farmland;
Look, oh gently look on my flock enfolded
    Here, with its firstlings.

Bless, and gently go. On thy boisterous feast-day,
Cyprian wine shall flow, where the chosen victim
Stains the fresh-cut turf, and thine ancient altar
    Smokes with our incense.

Goat and kid shall frisk in the flowering grasses,
Ploughmen dance!—on earth!—while the festal village
Claps its hands in time, and the unyoked oxen
    Rest where the streams flow.

There the wolf shall stray, and the flock not fear him,
There, while all the slaves of the land go singing,
Autumn beech-leaves, flying in gold and crimson,
    Fall, at thy feet, Faun.

No rendering in verse could be true to the original, if it aimed at being literal. Incidentally, the order of the last two stanzas is here inverted. The natural "curve" of the poem, in English, seemed to take that form; and I thought it best to obey.

Horace, Odes 3.18:

Faune, nympharum fugientium amator,
per meos finis et aprica rura
lenis incedas, abeasque parvis
     aequus alumnis,

si tener pleno cadit haedus anno,
larga nec desunt Veneris sodali
vina craterae, vetus ara multo
     fumat odore.

ludit herboso pecus omne campo,
cum tibi nonae redeunt Decembres;
festus in pratis vacat otioso
     cum bove pagus;

inter audacis lupus errat agnos,
spargit agrestis tibi silva frondis,
gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor
     ter pede terram.