{"id":153,"date":"2008-11-01T14:06:40","date_gmt":"2008-11-01T14:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=153"},"modified":"2008-11-01T14:06:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-01T14:06:40","slug":"poem-vides-ut-alta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/poem-vides-ut-alta\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Vides ut alta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Horace’s Ode I:IX, Vides ut alta<\/em> (translated by David West), was inspired by Mount Soracte (aka Soratte<\/a>), in the Tiber Valley, north of Rome, and pictured here.\u00a0 Carpe diem<\/em> is the theme.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You see Soracte standing white and deep
\nwith snow, the woods in trouble, hardly able
\nto carry their burden, and the rivers
\nhalted by sharp ice.
\nThaw out the cold. Pile up the logs
\non the hearth and be more generous, Thaliarchus,
\nas you draw the four-year-old Sabine
\nfrom its two-eared cask.
\nLeave everything else to the gods. As soon as
\nthey still the winds battling it out
\non the boiling sea, the cypresses stop waving
\nand the old ash trees.
\nDon’t ask what will happen tomorrow.
\nWhatever day Fortune gives you, enter it
\nas profit, and don’t look down on love
\nand dancing while you’re still a lad,
\nwhile the gloomy grey keeps away from the green.
\nNow is the time for the Campus and the squares
\nand soft sighs at the time arranged
\nas darkness falls.
\nNow is the time for the lovely laugh from the secret corner
\ngiving away the girl in her hiding-place,
\nand for the token snatched from her arm
\nor finger feebly resisting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reference:
\n<\/em>
\nHorace [1997 AD\/23 BCE]: The Complete Odes and Epodes.<\/em> Translation by David West. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
\nNote: <\/em>The opening of this poem was recited (in Latin) in May 1944 by German army officer and Military Governor of occupied Crete, General Heinrich Kreipe, while being transported following his kidnapping by the Cretan resistance during World War II.\u00a0\u00a0 Traveling with the resistance, British SOE agent Major Patrick Leigh Fermor recognized the ode, and completed the stanza to the surprise of Kreipe. \u00a0 There is something indescribably sad about this story, a small incident revealing so much about Nazi destruction of Europe’s common culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horace’s Ode I:IX, Vides ut alta (translated by David West), was inspired by Mount Soracte (aka Soratte), in the Tiber Valley, north of Rome, and pictured here.\u00a0 Carpe diem is the theme. You see Soracte standing white and deep with snow, the woods in trouble, hardly able to carry their burden, and the rivers halted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","p1","y2008","m11","d01","h14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}