Laudator Temporis Acti

Horace, Odes 1.9, tr. H. Rackham, Greece & Rome 10 (May, 1941) 138:

How dazzling white with drifted snow
Soracte stands! The woods below
    Are bowed to breaking with their burden;
The frozen rivers have ceased to flow.

Come, friend, let's drive away the cold:
Pile the logs high as hearth will hold,
    And bring me forth a flask of Sabine,
The strong, the mellow, the four years old.

All else entrust to heaven's will,
Which bids the battling winds be still—
    And waves grow calm, and peace possesses
The ash and cypress upon the hill.

No matter what the morrow prove:
Count each day gain the Powers above
    May grant us. Take what boyhood offers,
The fun and dancing and making love.

Leave gloom for when your hair is grey;
Youth is the time for sport and play—
    Then off to keep your tryst at twilight
And softly prattle an hour away;

Or by a tell-tale laugh to trace
The saucy charmer's hiding-place,
    And snatch a pledge from wrist or finger,
Surrendered with but a feign'd ill grace.

---

Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec iam sustineant onus
    silvae laborantes geluque
    flumina constiterint acuto.

Dissolve frigus ligna super foco        5
large reponens atque benignius
    deprome quadrimum Sabina,
    o Thaliarche, merum diota.

Permitte divis cetera; qui simul
stravere ventos aequore fervido        10
    deproeliantis, nec cupressi
    nec veteres agitantur orni.

Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere et
quem fors dierum cumque dabit lucro
    adpone, nec dulcis amores        15
    sperne puer neque tu choreas,

donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et Campus et areae
    lenesque sub noctem susurri
    composita repetantur hora;        20

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

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sappho und Simonides (Berlin: Weidmann, 1913), p. 311:

Hübsche Verse, aber noch kein Gedicht.

R.G.M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 118:

This is a great poem.