Virgil's Copa in a Medieval Latin textbookDeath twitches my ear. “Live,” he says; “I am coming.”

[Pereat qui crastina curat.
Mors aurem vellens Vivite, ait, venio.]

Virgil the Poet
Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [b. Publius Vergilius Maro; also Vergil]
“Copa [The Dancing Girl / The Barmaid / The Female Tavern Keeper],” ll. 37-38, Appendix Vergiliana [Minor Poems]
    (Source)

The Appendix Vergiliana were long considered authentic, if younger, poems by Virgil, but scholars today consider them to be by other, unknown authors from around the 1st Century AD, collected in Late Antiquity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., quoted the line in a radio address on his ninetieth birthday (1931-03-08), as noted below.

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Away with him who heeds the morrow! Death, plucking the ear, cries: "Live; I come!"
[tr. Fairclough (1908)]

Let him perish who
Doth care about to-morrow. Death your ear
Demands and says, "I come, so live to-day."
[tr. Mooney (1916)]

Death plucks my ear and says, Live -- I am coming.
[tr. Holmes (1931)]

Never mind tomorrow. In my ear
Death whispers: "Live! I'm coming. I am here!"
[tr. Slavitt (2011)]


 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 15-Mar-24
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