I chose Horace’s Ode 4.7 because I prefer his nature poems and I especially like the circular imagery of the seasons in the third stanza. However, the poem also has additional depth in its extension of the cyclical changing of the seasons into the linear pattern of human life. There’s a clear sense of Horace’s Epicurean philosophy in the second stanza which warns of the swift passage of time.

My primary concern in translating this poem was first to keep it as close to the literal meaning as possible while rendering it understandable to the English reader. Secondly, I chose to set it to a meter more suited to English in alternating lines of iambic pentameter and trimeter. The differing lengths of the alternating lines are meant to correspond to Horace’s original. The majority of changes I made were changes in word order to make the lines readable and small variations in translating vocabulary to allow for scansion.
I chose not to use any rhyme scheme, in part because the need to rhyme would even further diminish the accuracy of the translation, but also because Classical Latin poetry used meter rather than rhyme, so it brings it closer in that respect to the original.