Odes 1.23

Odes 1.23, also known as Ad Chloen ('To Chloe'), or by its incipit, Albi, ne doleas plus nimio memor, is one of the Odes of Horace. The poem is written in the fourth Asclepiadean metre, and is of uncertain date; not after 23 BC.[1]

Summary
Women with a fawn, 1st century AD fresco from Pompeii

You shun me like a timid fawn that seeks its mother on the trackless mountain and trembles at the rustling bramble or the darting lizard (1–8). I'll do you no harm. Cease to cling to your mother. You are ripe for a mate (9–12).[1]

Versions

Cf. Dobson's roundel: "You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy, / As some stray fawn that seeks its mother". For difference between ancient and modern feeling, cf. Landor's "Gracefully shy is yon Gazelle". For the comparison of the girl to a fawn, cf. Anacreon, fragment 51. Spenser, F. Q. 3.7.1: "Like as an hind forth singled from the herd, / That hath escaped from a ravenous beast, / Yet flies away of her own feet afeard; / And every leaf, that shaketh with the least / Murmur of wind, her terror hath increased."[2]

References
  1. Bennett 1901, p. 31.
  2. Shorey 1911, pp. 207–8.

Sources

Attribution: Public Domain This article incorporates text from these sources, which are in the public domain.

  • Bennett, Charles E. (1901). Horace: Odes and Epodes. Norwood, MA: Allyn and Bacon. p. 31.
  • Moore, Clifford Herschel (1902). Horace: The Odes and Epodes and Carmen Saeculare. United States: American Book Company. pp. 124–5.
  • Shorey, Paul; Laing, Gordon J. (1911). Horace: Odes and Epodes (Rev. ed.). Boston, MA: Benj. H. Sanborn & Co. pp. 207–8.

Further reading
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