Ode to Thrale
On 6 September 1775 Samuel Johnson wrote a Latin Ode to Thrale whilst on a tour of the Scottish Shetlands. This is reproduced below on the left.
On the right is an translation in English Sapphics by Jonathan B.P.J. Hadfield, who has very generously given Thrale.com consent to reproduce his work. Jonathan says, "Dr. Johnson is arguing that the tough, squalid and filthy life that a crofter was compelled to lead precluded all culture. The Sapphic verse is a metre perhaps invented by Sappho, the Greek poetess of Lesbos, which was taken into Latin by Catullus and later, with briliant success, by Horace. Johnson uses it here and I have attempted to use it here in an English dress."
Permeo terras,
ubi nuda rupes Pervagor gentes, hominum ferorum Inter erroris salebrosa longi, Seu viri curas pia nupta mulcet, Sit memor nostri, fideique merces,
Verses written in Skye by Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, Hester Thrale. Thraliana December 1777. |
Through lands I travel, where the naked cliff-top Through tribes I wander where barbarian clansmen Through all the joltings of a lengthy journey Whether, as good wife, she soothes her husband's worries, May she remember me! Be her faith rewarded!  Verses translated in English Sapphics by 2 = Smoky air within a crofter's cottages which blackens the walls. |
Rura
labores.