The Odes/Book II/9

Book II, 8: Faithless Barine

The Odes Book II, 9: Stop Weeping written by Horace

Book II, 10: The Golden Mean

Translated by A. S. Kline Latin original text - French Ulysse de Séguier's translation

Stop Weeping       The rain doesn’t fall from the clouds forever on the sodden fields, and capricious storm-winds don’t always trouble the Caspian waters, nor does the solid ice linger, Valgius, dear friend of mine, through all twelve months, and the oak woods of Garganus aren’t always trembling, because of the northern gales, or the ash trees stripped of their foliage:   But you’re always pursuing in tearful ways the loss of your Mystes, and your endearments don’t ebb with the evening star’s rising or when it sinks before the swift sunrise.   Yet Nestor, who lived for three generations, didn’t mourn his beloved Antilochus, every moment, nor were the youthful Troilus’s Trojan parents and sisters,   always weeping. Stop your unmanly grieving now, and let’s sing about Augustus Caesar’s new trophies instead, the ice-bound Mount Niphates, and the Persian waters,   with its flow reduced, now the Medes are added to the subject nations, and then the Thracians, riding over their meagre landscape, within the bounds that we’ve now set for them.   ...