Horace - Odes I:5 - Quis Multa Gracilis (What Slender Youth)

Horace - Odes I:5 - Quis Multa Gracilis (What Slender Youth)

What lovely youth in what rose-scented lair

Now lays his handsome head upon your lap?

For whom now do you comb your yellow hair,

And set with coy simplicity the trap?

How often will he deplore his wretched fate

Like one who in fair weather sets to sea

And strikes the tempest when it is too late

To win again his lost tranquillity.

Now he believes you golden through and through,

Ever good-humoured, ever kind and sweet,

He cannot find a single fault in you

Nor tell true currency from counterfeit.

Unhappy he who has not known your love,

Unhappier he who has: – and as for me,

That votive slab, these dripping garments prove

I too have suffered shipwreck in that sea.

DUFF COOPER (1890-1954)

Cooper was a British politician and statesman. You can read about him here.

This translation is found in Horace, Poems, ed. Paul Quarrie, New York: Knopf, 2015, pp. 29-30.