Tennyson's Brook

Latin Latin Poetry
1

Tennyson’s English original is at http://www.english-for-students.com/The-Brook.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Saunders_Evans

Evans in the 19th century translated it into Latin elegaics. Each English couplet has 15 syllables and became a Latin elegaic couplet, which needed much expansion of the text by Evans. The Latin form is from the WWW, being a somewhat erratic OCR (optical character recognition) scan of an old hand-typeset book which is now out of copyright. I have proofread the OCR errors as I can.

Qua stabulant fulicae, qua devolat ardea, saltu
inde dato liquidas ordior ire uias ;
emicat inde ineus filicem fons inter opacam
per uallem querilis obstrepiturus aquis.
triginta obliquus trepido decurrere colles
aut medius furtim per iuga lapsus eo :
praeuehor oppidulum, bis dena mapalia uiso,
et quinquaginta pontibus impedior.
denique rura, Philippe, lauo tua pinguia, grandem
ad fluuium socias appositurus aquas :
nam meus, ut uariis mortalibus effluat aetas,
perpetuus tenor est : semper iturus eo.
garrulus argutor per leuia saxa uiarum,
et sonitum tenuem tinnula lympha ciet :
inque sinus scateo nictantibus aequore bullis
et strepitant silices mobilitate mea.
tortilis irrito ripas haud simplice flexu :
curuaturque mihi naepe noualis ager ;
saepe, Napaearum latebrae, procurrit in undas
fronde frequens maluae uimineaque iugum.
usque cachinnor iens alacer, lymphasque loquaces,
ubere dum fluuio miscear, usque traho :
namque ego, decurrant homines breue quamlibet aeuum,
dempto fine uagor : semper iturus eo.
mille traho gyros huc ambitiosus et illuc,
nunc in gurgitibus flore natante rosae,
mine pingui trutta, muscam si adspexit inermem,
uel glauco ad summum subsiliente lacum.
est ubi, dum longos errores metior, orbem
sensi lacteolum fluctibus ire meis :
est ubi me dirimit candens argenteus undae,
aurea quem subter glarea lucet, obex.
omniaque amne uoluta traho, laticesque tumentem
ad fluuium tenues impliciturus ago :
namque ego, rnortales uarient breue quamlibet aeuum,
cursibus aeternis irrequietus eo.
per saltus fugio furtim et per amoena uireta :
sub coryli labor lubricus hospitium:
tum moueo memores amarantos, quem meus umor
florem in amatores auxiliaris alit.
nunc coit atra mihi, nunc albicat unda, meisque
summam rasus aquam laetor hirundinibus.
sol quoque purpureos intexens luce liquores
gestit harenosis luxuriare uadis.
tuin solus queror ad lunam Titaniaque astra,
findens multiplici squalida tesca rubo :
mox mea dum lambo nasturtia, lentius itur.
aut in pumiceis otior obicibus.
inde nouum excutiens maeandrum protinus erro
uberibus fluuii consociandus aquis :
nam meus, ut uariis mortalibus effluat aetas,
perpetuus tenor est : semper iturus eo.
2

What fun. This is like a slightly corrupt manuscript. Let’s have a go at amending it. In the first eight lines I diagnose two errors, which I believe I can correct; but perhaps I missed others. Anyone else?

3
4

It has all the exuberance of Ovid, without, happily, any of the concomitant crudities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjq72aqgGI0

At 2:05.

5

I found two more, further down for a total of four. Not bad for OCR. I don’t want to spoil the fun for anyone else, so I’ll just say I’m pretty confident in that number, based on the original submission. The first two have been found and corrected.

6

One of the OCR errors in the first eight lines has still not been fixed. And further down I count four more, not two. I see a barely defensible metrical error too, not due to OCR.

Thanks for the link Hylander. Evans’ translation and Guinness’ performance, tours de force by two virtuosi.

PS. From The Spectator, 1894:
Asked to translate “forty oxen feeding like one,” he replied without a pause, " quadraginta boves pascentes unius luster," not forgetting to apologise for the false quantity in “quadraginta.” Asked again to translate into an iambic, “Well, old Stick-in-the-mud, how’s your conk ?” he replied with equal readiness, ly 13004*; ornpuxTi, we lxus xecpa, ;
The OCR error in the first is easily corrected. I leave it to someone else to fix the second

7

Hi Michael,
I did find one more error, bringing my total to 5; below line 8 I can only find 3 errors. Correcting one of them however would change the meter, because it eliminates a syllable. I’m not counting devolat. (It’s not incorrect, just inconsistent with the system used.) If there’s one more error, then I’m stumped!
Without giving too much away, the letters I would use to make the corrections are the following, in the order found:
r,m,s,n,u,c,m
If we’re tallying wrong letters, then I guess we’d have 9. (the m replaces 2 in each instance)
So, did I get them all, or am I still looking for one more?
P.S. This is fun!

8

Is that conk as in nasus or as in caput?

9

I have the book. This is (transcribed) “En borborooi steerikte, poos ekheis kara?”, (Here, double vowel = long vowel.) What that website setter-up’s OCR did with Greek is unbelievable.

10

Hi Anthony,
Thanks for the info! That answered my question about conk. It can mean nose or head. Also, I had no idea it was a Greek passage. After the previous Latin passage, “quadraginta boves pascentes unius instar”, I was looking for another Latin passage.

11

The OCR was enough to show it had to be Greek, and “an iambic” was a clue too. I had hesitantly guessed κάρα at the end, but didn’t want to waste time over the thing. The rendering is deplorably literal—unlike the poem, which is brilliant and worthy of the Tennyson, and obviously not off the cuff.

In the poem, one of my four below line 8 was hand for haud, but I see that’s only in Anthony’s 2nd, pasted, version, which I took to be the corrected one (as with meus for ineus)—but I’m not about to collate the two versions! So I guess we’re in accord. There’s still an error in the first 8 lines, however. Your r doesn’t quite do it does it?

I suppose I shouldn’t balk at obex (cf. obicio). But I fancy Vergil or Ovid would have, and it does conflict with obicibus further down.
Punctuation is off in places (e.g. full stop for comma), but we ignore that.

No-one else wants to join in? Or have we now made it too easy? Last chance, everybody. Tomorrow, 14th amendment Day, Don Eagle (eagle-eyed indeed, and a true Don) can reveal all.

12

Michael, thanks for the kind words! In a previous life, I worked in a profession that demanded a high degree of attention to detail. Today is indeed an appropriate day to “amend” the poem! It’s still a little early yet here on the East Coast of the USA, so I’ll wait a little bit. Unless there are any objections, I will post the amended version at 1600 GMT. (That’s high noon, my time). Michael, you know I can’t believe I missed that–and sitting right next to the r! I didn’t bother to check the word in the dictionary (thought I knew it), but now that I see it, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
P.S on the P.S.
I thought it might be iambic trimeter (employed by Catullus and Horace) because the OCR scan appeared to be so jumbled that even though there was this niggling little thought that it might be Greek, I decided to press on with trying to come up with a Latin translation and then match it to the OCR. You know, the other thing I didn’t catch was that the Spectator was founded by Addison & Steele, whose essays we read in high school (freshman year, I think).
P.P.S
Regarding the punctuation, that truly is a whole other can of worms! Besides, I’m pretty mediocre with punctuation myself. The only marks I would feel comfortable changing would be:

  1. comma or nothing after flexu (stop in the middle of a couplet?)
  2. comma or nothing after uireta (stop in the middle of a couplet?)
  3. comma after itur (full stop in middle of a couplet)
    Where he uses the stop before “semper iturus eo”, I think it’s because using the conjunction (sed or at) doesn’t fit metrically, so he uses the stop to achieve the same effect.
13 
Qua stabulant fulicae, qua deUolat ardea, saltu
inde dato liquidas ordior ire uias ;
emicat inde Meus filicem fons inter opacam
per uallem queRUlis obstrepiturus aquis.
triginta obliquus trepido decurrere colles
aut medius furtim per iuga lapsus eo :
praeuehor oppidulum, bis dena mapalia uiso,
et quinquaginta pontibus impedior.
denique rura, Philippe, lauo tua pinguia, grandem
ad fluuium socias appositurus aquas :
nam meus, ut uariis mortalibus effluat aetas,
perpetuus tenor est : semper iturus eo.
garrulus argutor per leuia saxa uiarum,
et sonitum tenuem tinnula lympha ciet :
inque sinus scateo nictantibus aequore bullis
et strepitant silices mobilitate mea.
tortilis irrito ripas haud simplice flexu :
curuaturque mihi Saepe noualis ager ;
saepe, Napaearum latebrae, procurrit in undas
fronde frequens maluae uimineaque iugum.
usque cachinnor iens alacer, lymphasque loquaces,
ubere dum fluuio miscear, usque traho :
namque ego, decurrant homines breue quamlibet aeuum,
dempto fine uagor : semper iturus eo.
mille traho gyros huc ambitiosus et illuc,
nunc in gurgitibus flore natante rosae,
NUnC pingui trutta, muscam si adspexit inermem,
uel glauco ad summum subsiliente lacum.
est ubi, dum longos errores metior, orbem
sensi lacteolum fluctibus ire meis :
est ubi me dirimit candens argenteus undae,
aurea quem subter glarea lucet, obex.
omniaque amne uoluta traho, laticesque tumentem
ad fluuium tenues impliciturus ago :
namque ego, Mortales uarient breue quamlibet aeuum,
cursibus aeternis irrequietus eo.
per saltus fugio furtim et per amoena uireta :
sub coryli labor lubricus hospitium:
tum moueo memores amarantos, quem meus umor
florem in amatores auxiliaris alit.
nunc coit atra mihi, nunc albicat unda, meisque
summam rasus aquam laetor hirundinibus.
sol quoque purpureos intexens luce liquores
gestit harenosis luxuriare uadis.
tuM solus queror ad lunam Titaniaque astra,
findens multiplici squalida tesca rubo :
mox mea dum lambo nasturtia, lentius itur.
aut in pumiceis otior obicibus.
inde nouum excutiens maeandrum protinus erro
uberibus fluuii consociandus aquis :
nam meus, ut uariis mortalibus effluat aetas,
perpetuus tenor est : semper iturus eo.

Changes are highlighted in capitals.
To sum up:
devolat = deuolat (for stylistic consistency)
ineus = meus
quenilis = querulis
naepe = saepe
mine = nunc
rnortales = mortales
tuin = tum
14

That’s that then. Much easier to amend than manuscripts of Catullus. Anyone have questions or comments on the Latin?

Aetos, I’m surprised if Evans used u not v for the consonant. And on your PPS: wouldn’t sed or at before semper iturus eo (3x) give quite the wrong sense? Colon is exactly right.

15

Believe it or not, he did or at least his printer did. As to the colon before semper iturus eo, I quite agree; it makes the phrase stand out to highlight the contrast between the immortal quality of nature versus the ephemeral nature of man. Tennyson is able to do that by placing “But” at the beginning of the line. Evans’ solution for the Latin is just as elegant. I, on the other hand, was thinking a little too literally!