ODE LXXVIII.

WOULD that I were a tuneful lyre,
Of burnished ivory fair;
Which, in the Dionysian choir,
Some blooming boy should bear!

Would that I were a golden vase,
And then some nymph should hold
My spotless frame, with blushing grace,
Herself as pure as gold!

ODE LXXIX.

WHEN Cupid sees my beard of snow. Which blanching Time has taught to flow. Upon his wing of golden light

He passes with an eaglet's flight,

And flitting on he seems to say,

"Fare thee well, thou'st had thy day!"

CUPID, whose lamp has lent the ray
Which lightens our meandering way;
Cupid, within my bosom stealing,
Excites a strange and mingled feeling,
Which pleases, though severely teasing,
And teases, though divinely pleasing!

LET me resign a wretched breath,
Since now remains to me
No other balm than kindly death
To sooth my misery!

I KNOW thou lov'st a brimming measure,
And art a kindly, cordial host;
But let me fill and drink at pleasure,—
Thus I enjoy the goblet most.

I FEAR that love disturbs my rest,

Yet feel not love's impassioned care; I think there's madness in my breast, Yet cannot find that madness there!

FROM dread Leucadia's frowning steep, I'll plunge into the whitening deep : And there I'll float to waves resigned, For Love intoxicates my mind!

[AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, there are some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a kind of Coronis to the work; but I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety-a frequent recurrence of the same thought within the limits of an epitaph, to which they are confined, would render a collection of them rather uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those elegant tributes to the reputation of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but designing a translation of all that are on the subject, I imagined it was necessary to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase.]

AROUND the tomb, O Bard divine!

Where soft thy hallowed brow reposes,

Long may the deathless ivy twine,
And summer pour her waste of roses!

And many a fount shall there distil,
And many a rill refresh the flowers;
But wine shall gush in every rill,

And every fount be milky showers.

Thus, shade of him whom Nature taught
To tune his lyre and soul to pleasure,
Who gave to love his warmest thought,
Who gave to love his fondest measure!

Thus, after death, if spirits feel,

Thou mayst, from odours round thee streaming,
A pulse of past enjoyment steal,

And live again in blissful dreaming!

HERE sleeps Anacreon, in this ivied shade;
Here mute in death the Teian swan is laid.
Cold, cold the heart which lived but to respire
All the voluptuous frenzy of desire!

And yet, O Bard! thou art not mute in death:
Still, still we catch thy lyre's delicious breath,
And still thy songs of soft Bathylla bloom,
Green as the ivy round the mouldering tomb!

Nor yet has death obscured thy fire of love,
Still, still it lights thee through the Elysian grove ;
And dreams are thine, that bless the elect alone,
And Venus calls thee even in death her own!

O STRANGER! if Anacreon's shell
Has ever taught thy heart to swell
With passion's throb or pleasure's sigh,
In pity turn, as wandering nigh,
And drop thy goblet's richest tear
In exquisite libation here!
So shall my sleeping ashes thrill
With visions of enjoyment still.
I cannot even in death resign
The festal joys that once were mine,
When Harmony pursued my ways,
And Bacchus wantoned to my lays.
Oh! if delight could charm no more,
If all the goblet's bliss were o'er,
When fate had once our doom decreed,
Then dying would be death indeed!
Nor could I think, unblest by wine,
Divinity itself divine!

AT length thy golden hours have winged their flight,
And drowsy death that eyelid steepeth;

Thy harp, that whispered through each lingering night,
Now mutely in oblivion sleepeth!

She too, for whom that harp profusely shed
The purest nectar of its numbers,

She, the young spring of thy desires, has fled,
And with her blest Anacreon slumbers!
Farewell! thou hadst a pulse for every dart,
That Love could scatter from his quiver;
And every woman found in thee a heart,

Which thou, with all thy soul, didst give her !

REMARKS ON ANACREON.

THERE is very little known with certainty of the life of Anacreon. Chamæleon Heracleotes, who wrote upon the subject, has been lost in the general wreck of ancient literature. The editors of the poet have collected the few trifling anecdotes which are scattered through the extant authors of antiquity, and supplying

the deficiency of materials by fictions of their own imagination, they have arranged what they call a life of Anacreon. These specious fabrications are intended to indulge that interest which we naturally feel in the biography of illustrious men; but it is rather a dangerous kind of illusion, as it confounds the limits of history and romance, and is too often supported by unfaithful citation.

Our poet was born in the city of Téos, in the delicious region of Ionia, where everything respired voluptuousness. The time of his birth appears to have been in the sixth century before Christ, and he flourished at that remarkable period when, under the polished tyrants Hipparchus and Polycrates, Athens and Samos were the rival asylums of genius. The name of his father is doubtful, and therefore cannot be very interesting. His family was perhaps illustrious; but those who discover in Plato that he was a descendant of the monarch Codrus exhibit, as usual, more zeal than accuracy.

The disposition and talents of Anacreon recommended him to the monarch of Samos, and he was formed to be the friend of such a prince as Polycrates. Susceptible only to the pleasures, he felt not the corruptions, of the court; and while Pythagoras fled from the tyrant, Anacreon was celebrating his praises on the lyre. We are told too by Maximus Tyrius that by the influence of his amatory songs he softened the mind of Polycrates into a spirit of benevolence towards his subjects.

Hipparchus, who now maintained at Athens the power which his father Pisistratus had usurped, was one of those elegant princes who have polished the fetters of their subjects. He was the first, according to Plato, who edited the poems of Homer, and commanded them to be sung by the rhapsodists at the celebration of the Panathenæa. As his court was the galaxy of genius, Anacreon should not be absent. Hipparchus sent a barge for him; the poet embraced the invitation, and the muses and the loves were wafted with him to Athens.

The manner of Anacreon's death was singular. We are told that in the eighty-fifth year of his age he was choked by a grapestone; and however we may smile at their enthusiastic partiality who pretend that it was a peculiar indulgence of Heaven which stole him from the world by this easy and characteristic death, we cannot help admiring that his fate should be so emblematic of his disposition. Cælius Calcagninus alludes to this catastrophe in the following epitaph on our poet :

Then, hallow'd Sage, those lips which poured along

The sweetest lapses of the cygnet's song,

A grape has closed for ever!

Here let the ivy kiss the poet's tomb,

Here let the rose he loved with laurels bloom,
In bands that ne'er shall sever!

But far be thou, oh! far, unholy vine,
By whom the favourite minstrel of the Nine
Expired his rosy breath;

Thy god himself now blushes to confess,
Unholy vine! he feels he loves thee less,

Since poor Anacreon's death!