COUNTRY LIVING
… inutilisque falce ramos amputans
feliciores inserit
To utilise something is to use it. Somthing inutilis is useless. Amputans is amputating. Given the context, let’s go with pruning. Ramifications are branching possibilities, from ramus, a branch. Falx is a sickle. In botany and anatomy, falcate means sickle-shaped. So falce ramos amputans is “Pruning the useless branches with a sickle…”
You may have guess that inserit means he inserts. It’s a good guess. To insert derives from the Latin word here, meaning to graft something. Felix is happy or lucky. Feliciores is the plural of the comparative form (remember that -ior-). Having pruned the useless branches, he is grafting in some more propitious stems.
aut pressa puris mella condit amphoris
aut tondet infirmas ovis.
Pressa mella is pressed honey. A mellifluous speech is one that flows like honey. Condit means he stores. We saw the same verb meaning to bury in our passage from Ovid. I suppose a burial is a form of storage. An amphora is a jug. Puris here means much what you would guess: pure, or purified. He is storing the pressed honey in washed jars.
A monk’s distinctive haircut, with the shaved spot, is called a tonsure. Tondo is to shave, or shear. Ovis is a sheep, an ovine animal. Here it is plural: he stores the pressed honey in washed jars, or shears the infirmas sheep. Infirmus can mean infirm, or sick, but it is better here to think of it as powerless. The sheep don’t like to be sheared, but they are too feeble to resist.
And that is sixteen lines of Horace, a good day’s work for any Latinist. Let’s look at the whole thing.