S15E5: “Ask Not (Odes I.11)” by Horace (trans. by John Conington)

The Well Read Poem

For this fifteenth season of the Well Read Poem, we are reading six poems in translation, written by a variety of ancient and modern poets. We hope that our discussion of these poems will be both interesting and instructive to anyone with an interest in literary translation as an art, and that it will serve to introduce you to a few poets whose acquaintance you have yet to make.

Today's poem is “Ask Not (Odes I.11)” by Horace, translated by John Conington. Poem begins at timestamps 8:40 (in Latin) and 9:28 (in English).

Odes I.11

by Horace, trans. by John Conington

Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios temptaris numeros. Ut melius quicquid erit pati! Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam, quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Ask Not

Ask not (’tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years, Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers. Better far to bear the future; my Leuconoe, like the past, Whether, Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last; This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore. Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more? In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb’d away. Seize the present; trust to-morrow e’en as little as you may.