Oh, there is nought in nature bright, Attend-for thus the tale is sung. introduced in the romance of Theodorus. Mure- rose: Jam te igitur rursus teneo, formosula, jam te Now I again embrace thee, dearest, He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming, and perhaps (as Earnes thinks) to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector. It may likewise regard the ancient practice of putt ng garlands of roses on the dead, as in Statius, Theb. lib. x. 782: Hi sertis, hi veris honore soluto Accumulant artus patriâque in sede reponunt Corpus odoratum, — where 'veris honor,' though it means every kind of flowers, may seem more particularly to refer to the rose. We read, in the Hieroglyphics of Disclosed the nymph of azure glance, Then, then, in strange eventful hour, And wantoned o'er its parent breast. Of him who sheds the teeming vine; ODE LVI.4 HE, who instructs the youthful crew Pierius, lib. lv., that some of the ancients used to * 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 AdonisRosa Illa quidem studiosa suum defendere Adonim, On whom the jealous war-god rushes; The snowy floweret feels her blood, and blushes] This appears to be one of the hymns whict vintage; one of the eminio vol, as our poet were sung at the anniversary festival of the 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. And taste, uncloyed by rich cesses, ex-Imagine thus, in semblance warm, All the bliss that wine possesses! And when the ripe and vermil wine, To balsam every mortal woe! No youth shall then be wan or weak, For dimpling health shall light the cheek; No heart shall then desponding sigh, For wine shall bid despondence fly! Thus till another autumn's glow Shall bid another vintage flow! 1 Madame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthé of Homer in his mind.-Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthé was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helea 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 Helène. 2 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. breeze Has wafted o'er the glassy seas, In languid luxury soft she glides, 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 dance, sea Bearing in triumph young Desire, There are a few blemishes in the reading of the ode before us, which have influenced Faber, Heyne, Brunck, etc., to denounce the whole poe n as spurious. Non ego pancis offendar maculis. I think it is beautiful enough to be authentic. s The abruptness of αρα τις τόρευσε ποντον is finely expressive of sudden adiniration, 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. 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 descrip tion, which is, like the golden cloud that hur over Jupiter and Juno, impervious to every bear but that of fancy. ODE LVIII.1 WHEN gold, as fleet as Zephyr's pinion, ; I have followed Barnes' arrangement of this ode; it deviates somewhat from the Vatican MS., but it appeared to me the more natural order. They tainted all his bowl of blisses, Oh! fly to haunts of sordid men, ODE LIX.5 SABLED by the solar beam, And now the captive stream escapes, While, round the vat's impurpled brim, Cæli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa, Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes, Si sic omnia dixisset! but the rest does not bear • Original: Φιλημάτων δε κεδνων, 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; Horace has, Desiderique temperare poculum;' some of the best are those recorded of Diogenes not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but im3 Acı 8°, acı μe devyel. This grace of iteration porting the love-philtres of the witches. By has already been taken notice of. Though some-vourite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking cups of kisses' our poet may allude to a fatimes merely a playful beauty, it is peculiarly when the lips of their mistresses had touched expressive of impassioned sentiment, and we may the brim: 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 those lines of Catullus, where he complains of the infidelity of his mistress, Lesbia: 'Or leave a kiss within the cup, And I'll not ask for wine.' 5 Degen, in the true spirit of literary scepti cism, 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. Of rosy youths and virgins fair, eyes, The orient tide that sparkling flies; Has kindled o'er the inspiring bowl, Blush through the bower, that, closely twined, Excludes the kisses of the wind! Was sacred as the nuptial bed; Such is the madness wine imparts. ODE LX.1 AWAKE to life, my dulcet shell, 'This hymn to Apollo is supposed not to have been written by Anacreon, and it certainly is rather a sublimer flight than the Teian wing is accustomed to soar. But we ought not to judge from this diversity of style, in a poet of whom time has preserved such partial relics. If we knew Horace but as a satirist, should we easily And though no glorious prize be thine, Breathe to the soft and Phrygian num'bers, Which, as my trembling lips repeat, Thy chords shall echo back as sweet. The cygnet thus, with fading notes, As down Cayster's tide he floats, Plays with his snowy plumage fair Upon the wanton murmuring air, Which amorously lingers round, And sighs responsive sound for sound Muse of the Lyre! illume my dream, Thy Phoebus is my fancy's theme; And hallowed is the harp I bear, And hallowed is the wreath I wear, Hallowed by him, the god of lays, Who modulates the choral maze! I sing the love which Daphne twined Around the godhead's yielding mind; I sing the blushing Daphne's flight From this æthereal youth of light; And how the tender, timid maid Flew panting to the kindly shade, Resigned a form, too tempting fair, And grew a verdant laurel there; Whose leaves, with sympathetic thrill, In terror seemed to tremble still! The god pursued, with winged desire; And when his hopes were all on fire, And when he thought to hear the sigh With which enamoured virgins die, He only heard the pensive air Whispering amid her leafy hair! But oh, my soul! no more-no more! Enthusiast, whither do I soar? This sweetly maddening dream of soul Has hurried me beyond the goal. Why should I sing the mighty darts Which fly to wound celestial hearts, When sure the lay, with sweeter tone, Can tell the darts that wound my own? believe there could dwell such animation in his lyre ? Suidas says that our poet wrote hymns, and this perhaps is one of them. We can perceive in what an altered and imperfect state his works are at present, when we find a scholiast upon Horace citing an ode from the third book of Anacreon. And wafts from our enamoured arms The banquet's mirth, the virgin's charmis. + Regnier, a libertine French poet, has written some sonnets on the approach of death, full of gloomy and trembling repentance. Chaulieu, however, supports more consistently the spirit of the Epicurean philosopher. See his poem, addressed to the Marquis La Farre: Plus j'approche du terme et moins je le redoute, etc. I shall leave it to the moralist to make his reflections here: it is impossible to be very Anacreontic on such a subject. 5 Scaliger, upon Catullus' well-known lines, 'Qui nunc it per iter,' etc., remarks that Acheron, with the same idea, is called avegodos by Theocritus, and 8voexopoμos by Nicander. Here ends the last of the odes in the Vatican MS., whose authority confirms the genuine antiquity of them all, though a few have stolen among the number which we may hesitate in attributing to Anacreon. In the little essay prefixed to this translation, I observed that Barnes had quoted this manuscript in orrectly, relying apon an imperfect copy of it, which Isaac Vossius had taken; I shall just mention two or three instances of this inaccuracy, the first which occur to me. In the ode of the Dove, on the words Πτέροισι συγκαλύψω, he say, "Vatican MS. via, etiani Prisciano invito, though the 18. reads συγκαλύψω, with συσκιάσω interlined. Degen, too, on the same line, is somewhat in error. In the twenty-second ode of this series, line thirteenth, the MS. has revin with at inter lined, and Barnes imputes to it the reading of Ten. In the fifty-seventh, line twelfth, he professes to have preserved the reading of the MS. Adauern 8' en aurn, while the latter has adaqueros 8' en aura. Almost all the other annotators have transplanted these errors from Barnes. The intrusion of this melancholy ode among the careless levities of our poet, has always reminded me of the skeletons which the Egyptians used to hang up in their banquet-rooms to inculcate a thought of mortality even amidst the dissipations of mirth. If it were not for the beauty of its numbers, the Teian Muse should founded:disown this ode. Quid habet illius, illius quae spirabat amores? To Stobaus we are indebted for it. 6 This ode consists of two fragments, which are to be found in Athenæus, book x., and which Barnes, from the similarity of their tendency, I think this a very has combined into one. justifiable liberty, and have adopted it in some other fragments of our poet. Degen refers us here to verses of Uz, lib. iv. der Trinker. 7 It was Amphictyon who first taught the Greeks to mix water with their wine; in commemoration of which circumstance they erected altars to Bacchus and the nymphs. On this mythological allegory the following epigram is Ardentem ex utero Semeles lavere Lyæum Naiades, extincto fulminis igne sacri; Horace often, with feeling and elegance, de- book it.: Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes, The wing of every passing day While heavenly fire consumed his Theban dame 1 He bathes him in the fountain of the nymph. |