Awesome Thing #8

Thom Thumb, in a pitched battle, pitting his puny frame against a ferocious wolverine.

Awesome Thing #7

A teen beach-party movie from the sixties, where the teens are velociraptors (teen-aged velociraptors, of course).

O Fortuna!

Well, readers, I couldn't figure out how to display the Latin text with my translation next to by using the normal means, so please forgive the large graphic (though if you're still using dial-up, you'd better be using the internet in the year 1997). This is the first song of the Carmina Burana (or Songs of Beuern) a book which contains a series of poems on various subjects. This one's about Fate. Instead of using end rhyme, I've opted for the more English (meaning Anglo-Saxon) use of alliteration. Hope you enjoy.

T-Shirt Idea: Say No to Telepaths

T-Shirt Idea: San Dimas

T-Shirt Idea: Sparschwein

The text is German for 'piggybank'.

Translation from Horace: 'O Navis'

XIV

O nauis, referent in mare te noui
fluctus. O quid agis? Fortiter occupa
portum. Nonne uides ut
nudum remigio latus,

et malus celeri saucius Africo
antemnaque gemant ac sine funibus
uix durare carinae
possint imperiosius

aequor? Non tibi sunt integra lintea,
non di, quos iterum pressa uoces malo.
Quamuis Pontica pinus,
siluae filia nobilis,

iactes et genus et nomen inutile:
nil pictis timidus nauita puppibus
fidit. Tu, nisi uentis
debes ludibrium, caue.

Nuper sollicitum quae mihi taedium,
nunc desiderium curaque non leuis,
interfusa nitentis
uites aequora Cycladas.

* * * *

O ship! These new tides will bear you back to sea!
What are you doing? Make bravely for the port!
Can you not see your flank is bare of oars?
And your mast is blasted by the the flaying Afric wind?
And that your yardarms groan?
Can you not see that without your girding ropes
Your keel can scarce survive the too imperious sea?

Your sails are not whole, nor your gods,
Upon whom you call when sorely pressed.
Though a pine of the Pontus, daughter of a noble forest,
You boast both a noble birth and a useless name:
When he fears the Mariner trusts no painted stern.
Pray beware, unless you be the doomed plaything of the wind.

Recently, weary anxiety was mine
Now great desire and no light care;
Shun the flowing seas between the glittering Cyclades!

I thought this poem appropriate to our day as Rome's situation, and that of the U.S. are quite analogous. Rome, having just finished a draining, demoralizing war, was considering entering into another without respite---a course against which the Poet argues in this poem. War in Iran, anyone?