Horace’s ‘Diffugere nives’ [Odes 4:7]

One of Horace’s most famous odes, this. In this post, after the Latin, there are three versions: literal prose; an attempt by me to render the poem in terms of its dactylic rhythm, line by line; and A E Housman’s famous Englishing. First:

Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis
arboribusque comae;
mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas
flumina praetereunt;

Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet
ducere nuda choros;
immortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum
quae rapit hora diem.

frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas
interitura, simul
pomifer Autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox
bruma recurrit iners.

damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae
nos, ubi decidimus,
quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus,
pulvis et umbra sumus.

quis scit, an adiiciant hodiernae crastina summae
tempora di superi?
cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico
quae dederis animo.

cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos
fecerit arbitria,
non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
restituet pietas;

infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum
liberat Hippolytum,
nec lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro
vincula Pirithoo.

This means:

The snow has fled; already the grass is returning to the fields and leaves to the trees. Earth is going through her changes and, with lessening flood, the rivers flow through their banks. The Grace, with the Nymphs and her twin sisters, ventures unrobed to lead the dance. The year and hour that rob us of gracious day warn you not to hope for infinite joys. The cold gives way before zephyr winds; spring is trampled underfoot by summer, which is destined likewise to pass away as soon as fruitful autumn has poured out its fruit-harvest, and lifeless winter soon returns again.

Although the swiftly changing moons repair their losses in the sky, we, when we have descended to that place whither righteous Aeneas, rich Tullus and Ancus had gone, are but dust and shadow. Who knows whether the gods will add tomorrow’s time to the sum of today’s hours? All things which you grant to your own dear soul shall escape the greedy clutches of your heir.

When once you have died and Minos has pronounced his august judgment against you, neither family, nor Torquatus, nor your eloquence, nor righteousness itself will restore you to life again. Diana does not release the chaste Hippolytus from the nether darkness, nor does Theseus have power to break the Lethean chains of his dear Pirithous.

It is, as I say, a very famous poem; and one thing the world does not need is yet another translation of Horace. Honestly, libraries are lousy with translations of Horace. There are grains of sand on the beaches of the world; then there are stars in the whole of the sky; and then there are translations of Horace.

Still: looking at this poem again, I was struck (because of something else I’ve been looking at) by something I’d forgotten: that it is written in dactyls. To be specific, this particular poem (alone of all the Odes) is written in the Archilochian metre: a dactylic hexameter alternating an abbreviated dactylic trimeter:

I was curious what the poem might sound like if I translated it, line-by-line (as close to word-by-word as I could manage) in a way that reproduced this dactylic rhythm. This is what I came up with.

Vanishing snow: now come grasses returning to meadows,
foliage plumping the trees:
change alters earth: and between banks in diminuendo
rivers are flowing at ease.

Grace, with her nymphs and her gemini sisters, goes boldly,
leads out the choral dance, nude:
nothing immortal to hope for — an annual warning — as fertile
daylight and hours exclude

frozenness melted by zephyrs and spring overrun by the summer
it itself dying the same:
appleful autumn has poured out her fruitage on land that, soon,
deadening winter reclaims.

Damage is speedily mended in heaven, reparative moonwork:
we, though, declining far
down where Aeneas the Pious, rich Tullus and Ancus speak clear:
“cinders and shadows we are”.

Who can know whether, by adding the sum of tomorrow to now here
heavenly gods alter time?
All will elude the avidious grasp of your heirs, and such comforts
you will donate to your mind.

Then, when you’re dead, and when glittering Minos has spoken against you
grim arbitration outright:
neither your breeding, Torquatus, nor fluency, no! not your
worth will restore you to life;

Hell won’t ungrip you. Diana can’t save you from darkness — as chaste
trapped-there Hippolytus shows.
Not even Theseus’ fortitude frees up from Lethe the much loved
chained Pirithous.

Decrescens (line 3) is the opposite of crescens ‘coming to be, arising, increasing’, whence our word, crescendo, which I here opposite as diminuendo. The idea is that the rivers, which were swollen in the winter by rainstorms and snowfall, diminish in the intensity of their spate with spring, running neatly between their banks rather than overflowing them. I wonder if Stanza 3, opening with pomifer (pōmum “fruit, apple” +‎ -fer “carrying”) Autumnus, was in Keats’s mind when he wrote his ‘To Autumn’. Whether Keats read Latin is a moot point among the scholarship (he would likely have picked up some Latin in his apothecary training, and we know he owned a single copy of Horatii Opera — though it doesn’t seem to me to matter: there were plenty of translations of Horace kicking around in the 18th-century). In stanza 6 Minos, judge of the dead, offers a judgment that is splendidus, ‘splendid, glittering, distinguished, noble, illustrious’. I tried ‘marvellous Minos’ and ‘magnificent Minos’ but the alliteration sounded wrong, and I ended-up with glittering, though it gives Minos a rather Glam Rock vibe.

And here, to cleanse your palate of such bitterness, is Housman’s celebrated rendering of the poem. He makes no attempt at dactyls, and regularises the line lengths. But he is Housman, and I am not:

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.

But oh, whate’er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o’er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.