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Here’s Basil Bunting’s version - an ‘overdraft’, not a strict translation - unpublished in his lifetime:

Like a fawn you dodge me, Molly,

a lost fawn.

A breath of wind scares her.

Leaves rustle, or a rabbit

stirs, and her heart flutters,

her knees quiver.

But it’s me chasing you, Molly,

not a tiger, not to tear you.

Let mother go,

you’re old enough for a man.

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Thanks Harry! In an early draft of this post I included the Latin and in fact precisely this translation, but in the end I thought the piece was probably long enough already. Glad to have it in the comments though thank you.

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I presented it with some trepidation - it isn’t exactly the cosiest of love poems!

By the by, I noticed that the Jonson IV.i - which I did not know, thank you - preserves the vocative ‘Ligurine’, making it look almost like a feminine ending/name. I was struck, in a reverse manner, by the gender ambiguity in Bunting’s ‘Molly’…

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Yes, very many early modern translations of Horace do this -- make the erotic poems addressed to boys either ambiguous in their address or outright switch it to a female name. I don't read 'Molly' as ambiguous re: gender though, I've only ever heard it for a girl. Interesting that you did not have this impression. Odes 1.23 is indeed certainly not a cosy poem, I wouldn't personally describe it as a love poem at all, but then I wouldn't call *any* of Horace's erotic odes love poems to be honest. I think I wrote briefly before about the edge of predation which is quite marked in both Horace and Bunting's erotic verse.

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I have once seen it the other way round too -- a version of Horace Odes 4.11, to Phyllis, addressed to a male friend ('Phil'). Quite funny and tender!

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