Do you see how Soracte stands white with deep snow, and the groaning woods can no longer carry the burden, and rivers are frozen into hard ice? Dispel the cold! pile wood generously on the fire, Thaliarchus, and bring out a bouteille of my more distinguished four-year-old Sabine. Leave the rest to the gods: let them calm the winds that fight over the seething sea, and at once the cypresses and the old ash trees will be still. Never ask what will happen tomorrow. Each day that Fate gives you, put down as profit; take the pleasures of love, my boy, take your part in the dancing, in green springtime, before the sad grey comes. Now is the time to be off to the Campus, the city squares, and your appointment; now for the soft whispers after dark, the quiet laugh that tells you she is waiting, hidden, in a cosy corner, the token that she will snatch from your arm or your unruly finger.
Horace, Odes 1.9 "To Thaliarchus". Translation partly published in Andrew Dalby, Empire of Pleasures (Routledge, 2000) pp. 39 and 258
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte nec iam sustineant onus
silvae laborantes geluque
flumina constiterint acuto?
Dissolve frigus ligna super foco
large reponens atque benignius
deprome quadrimum Sabina,
o Thaliarche, merum diota.
Permitte divis cetera, qui simul
strauere ventos aequore fervido
deproeliantis, nec cupressi
nec veteres agitantur orni.
Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere, et
quem fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro
adpone nec dulcis amores
sperne, puer, neque tu choreas,
donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et Campus et areae
lenesque sub noctem susurri
composita repetantur hora,
nunc et latentis proditor intumo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
pignusque dereptum lacertis
aut digito male pertinaci.