One of my favorite excerpts from the poetry of Ovid captures
the four seasons in two lines. I surely must have written of these lines
before, but I believe in repetition, so here they are, courtesy of The Latin Library:
Poma dat autumnus: formosa est
messibus aestas:
Ver
praebet flores: igne levatur hiems.
Ovid,
Remedia Amoris 187-188
Translation: Autumn gives fruits: beautiful is summer with
crops:
Spring
offers flowers: by fire winter is lightened.
I sit on this fourth day of the New Year before a woodstove.
Flames dance above glowing coals, and the rain falls on last night's snow. Within
the fire glows orange, the pale daylight reveals the orange spine of Millennium: A Latin Reader/374-1374 by
F.E. Harrison, on the cover of which St. Jerome looks out from his writing at a
slanted desk.
Reading, setting one's thoughts on fire, also lightens the
dark winter. In addition to Millennium,
I have Sarah Ruden's translation of Vergil's Aeneid at hand. The Latin excerpts in Millennium, balanced by the spare
English of Ruden, set in the landscape of snow, before a fire--no better way to
welcome another year than to look back, way back, and, catching fire, reflect
the light of millennia.
