Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Latin Poetry Widget 2: Leonine Verses (1)

I'm going to be doing something a bit different for the month of September here at the Bestiaria Latina blog; for more about this poetry project, see yesterday's post. This is the second group of poems: 11 new ones, plus 17 from previous posts, for a total of 28 on our way to 366 poems for the widget!

Meanwhile, for those of you interested in the Proverbs of the Day and the Fable of the Day, you can still find them online: Greek Proverbs | Audio Latin Proverbs | Proverbia Brevissima | Proverbia Brevia (3) | Animal Proverbs | Proper Name Proverbs | Vulgate Verses | Aesop's Fable of the Day.

And now, here are the short poems for today! These 11 poems are examples of rhyming Leonine verse. They come from Philosophia patrum versibus praesertim leoninis, rhythmis Germanicis adiectis collected by Julius Wegeler (1869), which you can find online at GoogleBooks. As you can see from the title, the original book contains rhyming German versions of the Latin verses. I am a big fan of Leonine verses because of their use of rhyme in Latin. You can read more about this style of Latin verse in this Wikipedia article about Leonine verse.

I hope you will enjoy these little poems!

Vultus fortunae mutatur imagine lunae:
Crescit, decrescit, in eodem sistere nescit.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)


Cum moritur dives, concurrunt undique cives,
Cum moritur pauper, sequitur vix unus et alter.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)


Omnis homo, quacunque domo, qua sede moratur,
Provideat, quando taceat, vel quando loquatur.
Nunc est dicendum, nunc cum ratione silendum.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)


Dentibus attritas rursus bos ruminat herbas,
Saepius ut tritae sint commoda pabula vitae;
Sic, documenta tui si vis retinere magistri,
Saepe recorderis dictis tibi tradita veris.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)


Pacem ne vites, per pacem te quoque dites;
O quam difficiles sunt sine pace dies!

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)


Disce, puer, tenero dum flos tibi floret in aevo;
Transit fine brevi puerilis flosculus aevi.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help) - for the rhyme here, you need to pronounce the diphthong "ae" as "e" (brevi ~ aevi) which was the typical medieval style, and medieval spelling, for that matter!


Parisios stolidum si quis transmittit asellum,
Si fuit hic asinus, non ibi fiet equus.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help: Parisios, "to Paris")


Dives eram dudum, fecerunt me tria nudum:
Alea, vina, Venus; tribus his sum factus egenus.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)


Pinta trahit pintam, trahit altera pintula pintam;
et sic per pintas nascitur ebrietas.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help: pinta = pint)


Esto memor mortis fueris dum corpore fortis.
Mors stans ante fores dicit tibi: corrige mores!
Quod sibi quisque serit praesentis tempore vitae,
Hoc sibi messis erit, dum dicitur: Ite, venite!

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help) - see note above about the rhyme vitae ~ venite


Absint offensae, cum fit celebratio mensae:
Sed cum laetitia sumatur potus et esca.

Source: Wegeler (Dictionary Help)



Aesop's Fables in Latin now available at Amazon.com.