When, in the starry courts above,
The pregnant brain of mighty Jove
Disclosed the nymph of azure glance,
The nymph who shakes the martial lance!
Then, then, in strange eventful hour,
The earth produced an infant flower,

I

Which sprung, with blushing tinctures dress'd,
And wanton'd o'er its parent breast.
The gods beheld this brilliant birth,
And hail'd the Rose, the boon of earth!
With nectar drops, a ruby tide, *
The sweetly orient buds they dyed,
And bade them bloom, the flowers divine
Of him who sheds the teeming vine;
And bade them on the spangled thorn
Expand their bosoms to the morn.

ODE LVI.2

HE, who instructs the youthful crew
To bathe them in the brimmer's dew,
And taste, uncloy'd by rich excesses,
All the bliss that wine possesses!
He, who inspires the youth to glance
In winged circlets through the dance!
Bacchus, the god, again is here,
And leads along the blushing year;
The blushing year with rapture teems,
Ready to shed those cordial streams
Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth, 3

With nectar drops, a ruby tide,

The sweetly orient buds they dyed, etc.] The author of the "Pervigilium Veneris ** (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the laboured luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adonis :

---rosæ

Fusæ aprino de cruore

according to the emendation of Lipsius. In the following epigram this hue is differently accounted for:

Illa quidem studiosa suum defendere Adonim,
Gradivus stricto quem petit ense ferox,

Affixit duris vestigia cæca rosetis,
Albaque divino picta cruore rosa est.

While the enamour'd queen of joy
Flies to protect her lovely boy,

On whom the jealous war-god rushes,

She treads upon a thorned rose,

And while the wound with crimson flows,
The snowy flow'ret feels her blood, and blushes!

2"*Compare with this elegant ode the verses of Uz. lib. i, die Weinlese."-DEGEN. This appears to be one of the hymns which were sung at the anniversary festival of the vintage; one of the excavior μvot, as our poet himself terms them in the fifty-ninth ode. We cannot help feeling a peculiar veneration for these relics of the religion of antiquity. Horace may be supposed to have written the nineteenth ode of his second book, and the twenty-fifth of the third, for some bacchanalian celebration of this kind.

3 Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,

Illuminate the sons of earth!] In the original notov αgovov xoμiwy. Madame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind, Odyssey, lib. iv. This

nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, with very elegant gallantry, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See DE MERÉ, quoted by Bayle, art. Hélène.

This ode is a very animated description of a picture of Venus on a discus, which represented the goddess in her first emergence from the waves. About two centuries after our poet wrote, the pencil of the artist Apelles embellished this subject, in his famous painting of the Venus Anadyomené, the model of which, as Pliny informs us, was the beautiful Campaspe, given to him by Alexander; though, according to Natalis Comes, lib. vii, cap. 16, it was Phryne who sat to Apelles for the face and breast of this Venus. 17 There are a few blemishes in the reading of the ode before us, which have influenced Faber, Heyne, Brunck, etc. to denounce the whole poem as spurious. Non ego paucis of fendar maculis. I think it is beautiful enough to be authentic.

2 And whose immortal hand could shed

Upon this disk the ocean's bed?] The abruptness of ∞pα TIS TOPEVσE TOVTOV, is finely expressive of sudden admiration, and is one of those beauties which we cannot but admire in their source, though, by frequent imitation, they are now become languid and unimpressive.

3 And all those sacred scenes of love,

Where only hallow'deyes may rove, etc.] The picture here has all the delicate character of the semi-reducta Venus, and is the sweetest emblem of what the poetry of passion ought to be,--glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of description, which is like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, impervious to every beam but that of fancy.

Light as the leaf that summer's breeze
Has wafted o'er the glassy seas,

She floats upon the ocean's breast,
Which undulates in sleepy rest,
And stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the amorous billows.
Her bosom, like the humid rose,
Her neck, like dewy-sparkling snows,
Illume the liquid path she traces,

And burn within the stream's embraces!
In languid luxury soft she glides,
Encircled by the azure tides,

Like some fair lily, faint with weeping,
Upon a bed of violets sleeping!
Beneath their queen's inspiring glance,
The dolphins o'er the green sea dance,
Bearing in triumph young Desire,
And baby Love with smiles of fire!
While, sparkling on the silver waves,
The tenants of the briny caves
Around the pomp in eddies play,
And gleam along the watery way.

ODE LVIII.3

WHEN gold, as fleet as Zephyr's pinion,+
Escapes like any faithless minion,

▾ Her bosom, like the humid rose, etc.] “Pwdewv (says an anonymous annotator) is a whimsical epithet for the bosom." Neither Catullus nor Gray have been of his opinion. The former has the expression,

En hic in roseis latet papillis.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd hours, etc.

Crottus, a modern Latinist, might indeed be censured for too vague an use of the epithet "rosy," when he applies it to the eyes: "e roseis oculis."

2 ——young Desire, etc.] In the original Îμɛpos, who was the same deity with Jocus among the Romans. Aurelius Augurellus has a poem beginning,

Invitat olim Bacchus ad cœnam suos
Comon, Jocum, Cupidinem.

Which Parnell has closely imitated:

Gay Bacchus, liking Estcourt's wine,

A noble meal bespoke us;

And, for the guests that were to dine,
Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus, etc.

3 I have followed Barnes's arrangement of this ode; it deviates somewhat from the Vatican MS., but it appeared to me the more natural order. 4 When gold, as fleet as Zephyr's pinion,

Escapes like any fuithless minion, etc.] In the original Ó Spunetus 8 xpucos. There is a kind of pun in these words, as Madame Dacier has already remarked; for Chrysos. which signifies gold, was also a frequent name for a slave. In one of Lucian's dialogues. there is, I think, a similar play upon the word, where the followers of Chrysippus are called golden fishes. The puns of the ancients are, in general, even more vapid than our own; some of the best are those recorded of Diogenes.

I.

5

And flies me (as he flies me ever),'
Do I pursue him? never, never!
No, let the false deserter go,
For who would court his direst foe?
But, when I feel my lightened mind
No more by ties of gold confined,
I loosen all my clinging cares,
And cast them to the vagrant airs.
Then, then I feel the Muse's spell,
And wake to life the dulcet shell;
The dulcet shell to beauty sings,
And love dissolves along the strings!
Thus, when my heart is sweetly taught
How little gold deserves a thought,
The winged slave returns once more,
And with him wafts delicious store
Of racy wine, whose balmy art
In slumber seals the anxious heart!
Again he tries my soul to sever
From love and song, perhaps for ever!
Away, deceiver! why pursuing
Ceaseless thus my heart's undoing?
Sweet is the song of amorous fire;
Sweet are the sighs that thrill the lyre;
Oh! sweeter far than all the gold
The waftage of thy wings can hold.
I well remember all thy wiles;
They wither'd Cupid's flowery smiles,
And o'er his harp such garbage shed,
I thought its angel breath was fled!
They tainted all his bowl of blisses,"

▾ And flies me (as he flies me ever), etc.] Aɛɛ d', aɛi με pɛuyet. This grace of itera tion has already been taken notice of. Though sometimes merely a playful beauty, it is peculiarly expressive of impassioned sentiment, and we may easily believe that it was one of the many sources of that energetic sensibility which breathed through the style of Sappho. See GYRALD. Vet. Poet. Dial. 9. It will not be said that this is a mechanical ornament by any one who can feel its charm in these lines of Catullus, where he com. plains of the infidelity of his mistress, Lesbia.

Coeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,

Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam,

Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
Nunc, etc.

Si sic omnia dixisset! but the rest does not bear citation.

Horace has "Desiderique temperare poculum," not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importing the love-philtres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favourite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim :

Or leave a kiss within the cup,

And I'll not ask for wine,

• as in Ben Jonson's translation from Philostratus; and Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea. 66 Ένα και πίνης αμα και φίλης," that you may at once both drink and kiss.

His bland desires and hallow'd kisses.
Oh! fly to haunts of sordid men,
But rove not near the bard again;
Thy glitter in the Muse's shade

Scares from her bower the tuneful maid;
And not for worlds would I forego
That moment of poetic glow,

When my full soul, in Fancy's stream,
Pours o'er the lyre its swelling theme.
Away, away! to worldlings hence,
Who feel not this diviner sense,
And, with thy gay fallacious blaze,
Dazzle their unrefined gaze.

ODE LIX.!

SABLED by the solar beam,
Now the fiery clusters teem,
In osier baskets, borne along
By all the festal vintage throng
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,

Ripe as the melting fruits they bear.

Now, now they press the pregnant grapes,
And now the captive stream escapes,

In fervid tide of nectar gushing,
And for its bondage proudly blushing!
While, round the vat's impurpled brim,
The choral song, the vintage hymn
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Steals on the cloy'd and panting air.
Mark, how they drink, with all their eyes,
The orient tide that sparkling flies;
The infant balm of all their fears,
The infant Bacchus, born in tears!
When he, whose verging years decline
As deep into the vale as mine,
When he inhales the vintage-spring,
His heart is fire, his foot's a wing;
And, as he flies, his hoary hair
Plays truant with the wanton air!

While the warm youth, whose wishing soul

Has kindled o'er the inspiring bowl,

Impassion❜d seeks the shadowy grove,

The title Extantos vos, which Barnes has given to this ode, is by no means appropriate. We have already had one of those hymns (ode 56), but this is a description of the vintage; and the title as otvov, which it bears in the Vatican MS., is more correct than any that have been suggested.

Degen, in the true spirit of literary scepticism, doubts that this ode is genuine, without assigning any reason for such a suspicion." Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;" but this is far from satisfactory criticism.