.poetry: two poems for nature, and one for love

[aesc]

I haven't done any translation for fun lately (what? I can translate for fun), and while researching some stuff to inflict on my students ended up finding some very lovely poetry from two authors, Petronius Arbiter (classical?) and Ausonius (early medieval). The three poems are short, but very lovely, and I thought I'd try my hand at some loose, more-poetic translations.

Qualis nox fuit illa, di deaeque,
quam mollis torus. haesimus calentes
et transfudimus hinc et hinc labellis
errantes animas. valete, curae
mortales

Gods, goddesses:
the night was a soft bed
and we two, twined together,
alight, with hungering lips
breathed our wandering spirits
back and forth.
Mortality, farewell.



Parvula securo tegitur mihi culmine sedes
uvaque pleno mero fecunda pendet ab ulmo.
dant rami cerasos, dant mala rubentia silvae,
Palladiumque nemus pingui se vertice frangit.
iam qua diductos potat levis area fontes,
Corycium mihi surgit olus malvaeque supinae
et non sollicitos missura papavera somnos.

My home: small, close-roofed;
pendant, ripening grapes, the elm,
branches dropping cherries, blush-apple orchards,
Minerva's olive breaking under its heavy crown,
and the earth drinking wide-running streams,
sweet kale and drowsing mallow,
poppies to bring no troubled dreams.

(lines 1-7)

(Petronius Arbiter)

* * *

Quis color ille vadis, seras cum propulit umbras
Hesperus et viridi perfudit monte Mosellam!
tota natant crispis iuga motibus et tremit absens
pampinus et vitreis vindemia turget in undis.

What color is in the shallows, when Hesperus
draws down the twilight and dyes the river hillside-green?
Those crests swim in riverine eddies and the absent vines
shake and the grapes stir in its glassy wave.

(Ausonius)

Comments

[toft]

Lovely.

[sage]

these are so beautiful.