26, _Vixi puellis_:
VIXI PUELLIS NUPER IDONEUS
F_or ladies' love I late was fit_,
A_nd good success my warfare blest_;
B_ut now my arms, my lyre I quit_,
A_nd hang them up to rust or rest_.
H_ere, where arising from the sea_
S_tands Venus, lay the load at last_,
L_inks, crowbars, and artillery_,
T_hreatening all doors that dared be fast_.
O_ Goddess! Cyprus owns thy sway_,
A_nd Memphis, far from Thracian snow_:
R_aise high thy lash, and deal me, pray_,
T_hat haughty Chloe just one blow!_
To translate in this manner is beyond all doubt to deserve the name of
poet.
We may go still farther and claim for Horace that he has been a dynamic
power in the art of translation, not only as it concerned his own poems,
but in its concern of translation as a universal art. No other poet
presents such difficulties; no other poet has left behind him so long a
train of disappointed aspirants. "Horace remains forever the type of the
untranslatable," says Frederic Harrison. Milton attempts the _Pyrrha_
ode in unrhymed meter, and the light and bantering spirit of Horace
disappears.
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