What is the most translated poem in history? Or, rather, which poem can boast the most distinguished roll of translators? One answer to these questions is the fifth poem in Book One of Horace’s Odes, published in 23 B.C., in the early years of the Augustan era. The Odes are the best productions of ancient Rome’s most endearing and most balanced poet, who built—as he himself forecast—“a monument more lasting than bronze.”

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa

perfusus liquidis urget odoribus

grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?

cui flavam religas comam,

simplex munditiis? heu quotiens fidem

mutatosque deos flebit et aspera

nigris aequora ventis

emirabitur insolens,

qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,

qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem

sperat, nescius aurae

fallacis! miseri, quibus

intemptata nites. me tabula sacer

votiva paries indicat uvida

suspendisse potenti

vestimenta maris deo.

It is impossible to translate poetry perfectly. As Boswell said, “In a different language it may be the same tune, but it has not the same tone. Homer plays it on a bassoon; Pope on a flageolet.” Here, though, is a decent “straight” translation, by A. D. Godley, a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Pyrrha! what slender youth in perfumes steeped courts thee mid circling roses in thy pleasant bower? For whom dost bind thy yellow locks with simple grace? Alas, how often shall he weep his outraged troth, his fortune