Horace Epode II
"Happy is he, far from the business world,
Who like the first men tends,
With his own oxen, to his father's fields,
And neither borrows, nor lends,
Nor like the soldier rouses to the trumpet,
Nor trembles when rough seas roar,
Avoiding, too, the forum and the threshold
Of the proud patron's door.
And so he either weds to the tall poplar
Mature shoots from the vine,
Or in hidden valleys watches wander all
His herds of lowing kine,
Or cuts dead branches, grafting new ones on
For fruitful future years,
Or stores pressed honey up in his clean jars,
Or gives his sheep the shears;
Or in the fields, when Autumn's raised its head
With mellow apples crowned,
He thrills to gather in the grafted pears,
And the purplest grapes around,
To honor you, Priapus, and you, Father
Sylvanus, his boundaries' guard.
He joys sometimes to lie beneath old oaks,
Or in thick grass in his yard,
While in their high banks waters glide along
And in the woods birds cheep,
And fountains with their flowing streams join in
With sounds to coax sweet sleep.
And when great-thundering Jove brings on the wintry
Season of rain and snow,
He either drives fierce boars with packs of hounds
Into a waiting blow
Or stretches out fine nets on a smooth staff
To trap the thrush, or devises
A noose to capture the panicked hares and foreign
Cranes—all of them fine prizes.
With all this, who would not forget love's cares,
Its ever-troubled heart?
But if a good wife keeps the house, and raises
Sweet children, does her part
As Sabine women do, or like the wife
Of a tanned Apulian,
And piles the sacred hearth with seasoned wood
To warm her weary man,
And puts the happy flocks in covered pens,
And milks them, and if she'll
Draw this year's wines from their sweet casks, and then
Prepare an unbought meal,
No Lucrine oysters, no, nor rare flatfish,
Nor wrasse could give me more
Pleasure, should a thundering Eastern tempest
Drive some up toward our shore—
No African fowl or pheasant could go down
My gut agreeably
As olives plucked from the most fruitful branch
Hung on the olive tree,
Or meadow-loving sorrel, or those mallows
That set sick bodies right,
A lamb slain for Terminalia, or a kid
Snatched from some lean wolf's bite.
Oh how I joy amid these feasts to watch
Fat sheep rush home, and oh
To see the oxen drag the inverted plough-share,
Their weary necks bent low,
The mansion's swarm, the home-born slaves there seated
Around the Lares' glow."Having said all this, that loan-shark Alfius,
Already now almost immersed
In country life, demands his debtors pay up on the Ides,
Lends more, at interest, on the First.
translated by Ryan Wilson
Epode II
Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis,
ut prisca gens mortalium,
paterna rura bobus exercet suis,
solutus omni faenore,
neque excitatur classic miles truci,
neque horret iratum mare,
forumque vitat et superba civium
potentiorum limina.
Ergo aut adulta vitium propagine
altas maritat populos,
aut in reducta valle mugientium
prospectat errantis greges,
inutilisque falce ramos amputans
feliciores inserit,
aut pressa puris mella condit amphoris,
aut tondet infirmas ovis;
vel cum decorum mitibus pomis caput
Autumnus agris extulit,
ut gaudet insitiva decerpens pira
certantem et uvam purpurae,
qua muneretur te, Priape, et te, pater
Silvane, tutor finium!
Libet iacere modo sub antique ilice,
modo in tenaci gramine:
labuntur altis interim ripis aquae,
queruntur in silvis aves,
fontesque lymphis obstrepunt manantibus,
somnos quod invitet levis.
At cum tonantis annus hibernus Iovis
imbris nivesque comparat,
aut trudit acris hinc et hinc multa cane
apros in obstantis plagas,
aut amite levi rara tendit retia,
turdis edacibus dolos,
pavidumque leporem et advenam laqueo gruem
iucunda captat praemia.
Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet,
haec inter obliviscitur?
Quodsi pudica mulier in partem iuvet
domum atque dulcis liberos,
Sabina qualis aut perusta solibus
pernicis uxor Apuli,
sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum
lassi sub adventum viri,
claudensque textis cratibus laetum pecus
distenta siccet ubera,
et horna dulci vina promens dolio
dapes inemptas apparet;
non me Lucrina iuverint conchylia
magisve rhombus aut scari,
si quos Eois intonata fluctibus
hiems ad hoc vertat mare,
non Afra avis descendat in ventrem meum,
non attagen Ionicus
iucundior, quam lecta de pinguissimis
oliva ramis arborum
aut herba lapathi prata amantis et gravi
malvae salubres corpori,
vel agna festis caesa Terminalibus
vel haedus ereptus lupo.
Has inter epulas ut iuvat pastas ovis
videre properantis domum,
videre fessos vomerem inversum boves
collo trahentis languido,
positosque vernas, ditis examen domus,
circum renidentis Lares!
Haec ubi locutus faenerator Alfius,
iam iam futurus rusticus,
omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam
quaerit Kalendis ponere.