Sunday 8 June 2008

'Leamophants' in Latin

Centum anni fugiunt: illas nunc cernere possis
ante oculos hortis lento agmine procedentes
vespere per mediam frigus sub fluminis undis
corpora mersuras: naso caudaque catenam
inter se nectunt ...


For those of a classical bent, you can now find my 'Leamophant' elephant poem translated into Latin, no less, on my Raw Light writing blog.

Many thanks to my friend and teacher John King, Classics Master at Rugby School, for knocking the poem into a more elegant shape. It provided some amusement at our evening class recently, reading through this line-by-line and seeing how he'd tackled the obvious difficulties of translating 'across the ages'; although the Romans certainly had elephants, they were not known for their silk parasols or shop front glass windows.

I hope those of you with a little knowledge - or even a lot! - will click over to Raw Light and enjoy trying to riddle out the Latin hexameters.

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