Idle Hours

During our lunch hour today, my Latin reading group came upon these lines from Horace's Sermo 2.6, just prior to the famous tale of the country mouse and the city mouse:

perditur haec inter misero lux non sine votis:
o rus, quando ego te aspiciam? quandoque licebit
nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis,
ducere sollicitae iucunda oblivia vitae?

Let me have a go at translating. First, more or less literally:

Lost amidst these matters to wretched me the light of day not without prayers:
Oh countryside, when shall I see you? And when will it be permitted
now with books of the ancients, now with slumber and idle hours,
to indulge in the pleasant forgetfulness of restless life?

Now let's try that in English:

Amidst all this stuff, I sometimes waste my day praying:
Oh, countryside, when will I see you? When will I be able
To indulge myself, oblivious to life's cares, sometimes reading
Old books, sometimes sleeping late and doing nothing.

Well, that's Horace for you. Carpe diem! Still, I think he's got hold of something there. Lately, I've spent some of my idle hours reading these old classical texts. Nowadays I'm more inclined to gather up Latin vocabulary than rose buds. But the thought is still the same.