Слике страница
PDF
ePub

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 charm'd and echoing air.
Mark, how they drink, with all their eyes,
The orient tide that sparkling flies,
The infant Bacchus, born in mirth,
While Love stands by, to hail the birth.

When he, whose verging years decline
As deep into the vale as mine,
When he inhales the vintage-cup,
His feet, new-wing'd, from earth spring up,
And as he dances, the fresh air

Plays whispering through his silvery hair.
Meanwhile young groups whom love invites,
To joys e'en rivalling wine's delights,
Seek, arm in arm, the shadowy grove,
And there, in words and looks of love,
Such as fond lovers look and say,
Pass the sweet moonlight hours away.'

ODE LX.2

AWAKE to life, my sleeping shell,
To Phoebus let thy numbers swell;
And though no glorious prize be thine,
No Pythian wreath around thee twine,
Yet every hour is glory's hour

To him who gathers wisdom's flower.
Then wake thee from thy voiceless slumbers,
And to the soft and Phrygian numbers,

Which, tremblingly, my lips repeat, Send echoes from thy chord as sweet. "Tis thus the swan, with fading notes, Down the Cayster's current floats, While amorous breezes linger round, And sigh responsive sound for sound.

Muse of the Lyre! illume my dream,
Thy Phoebus is my fancy's theme;
And hallow'd is the harp I bear,
And hallow'd is the wreath I wear,
Hallow'd 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 ethereal son of Light;
And how the tender, timid maid
Flew trembling to the kindly shade,'
Resign'd a form, alas, too fair,
And grew a verdant laurel there;
Whose leaves, with sympathetic thrill,
In terror seem'd to tremble still!
The god pursued, with wing'd desire;
And when his hopes were all on fire,
And when to clasp the nymph he thought,
A lifeless tree was all he caught;
And, stead of sighs that pleasure heaves,
Heard but the west-wind in the leaves!

But, pause, my soul, no more, no moreEnthusiast, whither do I soar? This sweetly-madd'ning dream of soul Hath hurried me beyond the goal. Why should I sing the mighty darts Which fly to wound celestial hearts, When ah, the song, with sweeter tone, Can tell the darts that wound my own? Still be Anacreon, still inspire The descant of the Teian lyre:

1 Those well acquainted with the original need hardly be reminded that, in these few concluding verses, I have thought right to give only the general meaning of my author, leaving the details untouched.

2 This hymn to Apollo is supposed not to have been written by Anacreon; and it is undoubtedly rather a sublimer flight than the Teian wing is accustomed to soar. But, in a poet of whose works so small a proportion has reached us. diversity of style is by no means a safe criterion. If we knew Horace but as a satirist, should we easily 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.

3 And how the tender, timid maid

Flew trembling to the kindly shade, &c.] Original:

Το μεν εκπεφευγε κέντρον, Φύσεως δ' αμειψε μορφήν.

I find the word *Evтpov here has a double force, as it also signifies that "omnium parentem, quam sanctus Numa, &c. &c." (See Martial.) In order to confirm this import of the word here, those who are curious in new readings, may place the stop after øveɛws, thus:

To μεν εκπέφευγε κεντρου
Φύσεως, δ' αμειψε μορφήν.

4 Still be Anacreon, still inspire

The descant of the Teian lyre:] The original is Tor Arακρέοντα μίμου. I have translated it under the supposition that the hymn is by Anacreon; though, I fear, from this very line, that his claim to it can scarcely be supported.

Τον Ανακρέοντα μιμου, “Imitate Anacreon.” Such is the lesson given us by the lyrist; and if, in poetry, a simple elegance of sentiment, enriched by the most playful felicities of

Still let the nectar'd numbers float,
Distilling love in every note!

And when some youth, whose glowing soul
Has felt the Paphian star's control,
When he the liquid lays shall hear,
His heart will flutter to his ear,
And drinking there of song divins,
Banquet on intellectual wine!!

Time has shed its sweetest bloom,
All the future must be gloom.
This it is that sets me sighing;
Dreary is the thought of dying!"
Lone and dismal is the road,
Down to Pluto's dark abode;
And, when once the journey's o'er,
Ah! we can return no more!

ODE LXI.3

YOUTH's endearing charms are fled;
Hoary locks deform my head;
Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,
All the flowers of life decay."
Withering age begins to trace
Sad memorials o'er my face;

fancy, be a charm which invites or deserves imitation, where shall we find such a guide as Anacreon? In morality, too, with some little reserve, we need not blush, I think, to follow in his footsteps. For, if his song be the language of his heart, though luxurious and relaxed, he was artless and benevolent; and who would not forgive a few irregularities, when atoned for by virtues so rare and so endearing? When we think of the sentiment in those lines:

Away! I hate the sland'rous dart,

Which steals to wound th' unwary heart, how many are there in the world, to whom we would wish 10 say. Τον Ανακρέοντα μίμου!

1 Here ends the last of the odes in the Vatican MS., whose authority helps to confirm 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 has quoted this manuscript incorrectly, relying upon 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 ПIrepotal ovykalvw, he says, "Vatican MS. ovoktagov, etiam Prisciano invito :” but the MS. reads συνκαλύψω, 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 interlined, and Barnes imputes to it the reading of revon. In the fifty-seventh, line twelfth, he professes to have preserved the reading of the ΜS. Αλαλημένη δ' επ' αυτή, while the latter has αλαλημένος E' avra. Almost all the other annotators have transplanted these errors from Barnes.

* The intrusion of this melancholy ode, among the careless levities of our poet, reminds us 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 disown this ode. "Quid habet illius, illius quæ spirabat amores?"

To Stobus we are indebted for it.

Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,

All the flowers of life decay.] Horace often, with feeling and elegance, deplores the fugacity of human enjoyments. See book ii. ode 11; and thus in the second epistle, book ii.:

[ocr errors]

ODE LXII.6

FILL me, boy, as deep a draught,
As e'er was fill'd, as e'er was quaff'd;
But let the water amply flow,
To cool the grape's intemperate glow ;'
Let not the fiery god be single,
But with the nymphs in union mingle.

Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes;
Eripuere jocos, venerem, convivia, ludum.
The wing of every passing day
Withers some blooming joy away;

And wafts from our enamor'd arms

The banquet's mirth, the virgin's charms.

▲ Dreary is the thought of dying, &c.] 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 de Lafare

Plus j'approche du terme et moins je le redoute, &c.
And, when once the journey's o'er,

Ah! we can return no more!] Scaliger, upon Catullus's well-known lines, "Qui nunc it per iter, &c." remarks that Acheron, with the same idea, is called avtodos by Theocritus, and ovoεkdpoμ by Nicander.

This ode consists of two fragments, which are to be found in Athenæus, book x., and which Barnes, from the similarity of their tendency, has combined into one. I think this a very 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."

[blocks in formation]

For though the bowl's the grave of sadness,
Ne'er let it be the birth of madness.
No, banish from our board to-night
The revelries of rude delight;

To Scythians leave these wild excesses,
Ours be the joy that sooths and blesses!
And while the temperate bowl we wreath,
In concert let our voices breathe,
Beguiling every hour along
With harmony of soul and song.

Come to Lethe's wavy shore,

Tell them they shall mourn no more. Thine their hearts, their altars thine; Must they, Dian-must they pine?

ODE LXIII.1

To Love, the soft and blooming child,
I touch the harp in descant wild;
To Love, the babe of Cyprian bowers,
The boy, who breathes and blushes flowers;
To Love, for heaven and earth adore him,
And gods and mortals bow before him!

ODE LXIV.2

HASTE thee, nymph, whose well-aim'd spear Wounds the fleeting mountain-deer!

Dian, Jove's immortal child,

Huntress of the savage wild!

Goddess with the sun-bright hair!

Listen to a people's prayer.

Turn, to Lethe's river turn,

There thy vanquish'd people mourn!"

ODE LXV.A

LIKE some wanton filly sporting,
Maid of Thrace, thou fly'st my courting.
Wanton filly! tell me why

Thou tripp'st away, with scornful eye,
And seem'st to think my doating heart
Is novice in the bridling art?
Believe me, girl, t is not so;

Thou'lt find this skilful hand can throw
The reins around that tender form,
However wild, however warm.
Yes-trust me I can tame thy force,
And turn and wind thee in the course.
Though, wasting now thy careless hours,
Thou sport amid the herbs and flowers,
Soon shalt thou feel the rein's control,
And tremble at the wish'd-for goal!

ODE LXVI.5

To thee, the Queen of nymphs divine,
Fairest of all that fairest shine;
To thee, who rul'st with darts of fire
This world of mortals, young Desire!

1 "This fragment is preserved in Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. lib. vi, and in Arsenius, Collect. Græc."-Barnes. It appears to have been the opening of a hymn in praise of Love.

2 This hymn to Diana is extant in Hephæstion. There is an anecdote of our poet, which has led some to doubt whether he ever wrote any odes of this kind. It is related by the Scholiast upon Pindar (Isthmionic. od. ii. v. 1, as cited by Barnes) that Anacreon being asked, why he addressed all his hymns to women, and none to the deities? answered, “Because women are my deities."

I have assumed, it will be seen, in reporting this anecdote, the same liberty which I have thought it right to take in translating some of the odes; and it were to be wished that these little infidelities were always allowable in interpreting the writings of the ancients; thus, when nature is forgotten in the original, in the translation "tamen usque recurret." 3 Turn, to Lethe's river turn,

There thy vanquish'd people mourn!] Lethe, a river of Ionia, according to Strabo, falling into the Meander. In its neighborhood was the city called Magnesia, in favor of whose inhabitants our poet is supposed to have addressed this supplication to Diana. It was written (as Madame

Dacier conjectures) on the occasion of some battle, in which the Magnesians had been defeated.

This ode, which is addressed to some Thracian girl, exists in Heraclides, and has been imitated very frequently by Horace, as all the annotators have remarked. Madame Dacier rejects the allegory, which runs so obviously through the poem, and supposes it to have been addressed to a young mare belonging to Polycrates.

Pierius, in the fourth book of his Hieroglyphics, cites this ode, and informs us that the horse was the hieroglyphical emblem of pride.

This ode is introduced in the Romance of Theodorus Prodromus, and is that kind of epithalamium which was sung like a scolium at the nuptial banquet.

Among the many works of the impassioned Sappho, of which time and ignorant superstition have deprived us, the loss of her epithalamiums is not one of the least that we deplore. The following lines are cited as a relic of one of those

poems:

Ολβιε γαμβρε. σοι μεν δη γαμος ως αρας,
Εκτετελεστ', έχεις δε παρθένον αν αραρ

See Scaliger, in his Poetics, on the Epithalamium.

And oh! thou nuptial Power, to thee
Who bear'st of life the guardian key,
Breathing my soul in fervent praise,
And weaving wild my votive lays,
For thee, O Queen! I wake the lyre,
For thee, thou blushing young Desire,
And oh! for thee, thou nuptial Power,
Come, and illume this genial hour.

Look on thy bride, too happy boy, And while thy lambent glance of joy Plays over all her blushing charms, Delay not, snatch her to thine arms, Before the lovely, trembling prey, Like a young birdling, wing away! Turn, Stratocles, too happy youth, Dear to the Queen of amorous truth, And dear to her, whose yielding zone Will soon resign her all thine own. Turn to Myrilla, turn thine eye, Breathe to Myrilla, breathe thy sigh. To those bewitching beauties turn; For thee they blush, for thee they burn.

Not more the rose, the queen of flowers, Outblushes all the bloom of bowers, Than she unrivail'd grace discluses, The sweetest rose, where all are roses. Oh! may the sun, benignant, shed His blandest influence o'er thy bed; And foster there an infant tree,

To bloom like her, and tower like thee!1

ODE LXVII.2

RICH in bliss, I proudly scorn
The wealth of Amalthea's horn;
Nor should I ask to call the throne
Of the Tartessian prince my own;
To totter through his train of years,
The victim of declining fears.
One little hour of joy to me
Is worth a dull eternity!

ODE LXVIII.4

Now Neptune's month ur sky deforms,
The angry night-cloud teems with storms;
And savage winds, infuriate driven,
Fly howling in the face of heaven!
Now, now, my friends, the gathering gloom
With roseate rays of wine illume:
And while our wreaths of parsley spread
Their fadeless foliage round our head,
Let's hymn th' almighty power of wine,
And shed libations on his shrine!

ODE LXIX.5

THEY WOve the lotus band to deck
And fan with pensile wreath each neck;
And every guest, to shade his head,
Three little fragrant chaplets spread;"

1 And foster there an infant tree,

To bloom like her, and tower like thee!] Original Kuraριττος δε πεφυκοι σεν ένι κήπω, Passeratius, upon the words "cum castum amisit florem," in the Nuptial Song of Catullus, after explaining "flos" in somewhat a similar sepse to that which Gaulminus attributes to podov, says, “Hortum quoque vocant in quo flos ille carpitur, et Græcis kηTOV COTI το εφήβαιον γυναικών.”

I may remark, in passing, that the author the Greek version of this charming ode of Catullus, as neglected a most striking and anacreontic beauty in those verses "Ut flos in septis, &c." which is the repetition the line, "Multi illum pueri, multæ optavêre puellæ," with the slight altera

tion of nulli and nullæ. Catullus himself, however, has been equally injudicious in his version of the famous ode of Sappho; having translated yɛoas iuepoev, but omitted all notice of the accompanying charm, ȧdu pwvovcas. Horace has caught the spirit of it more faithfully:

Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo,
Duke loquentem.

This fragment is preserved in the third book of Strabo.
Of the Tartessian prince my own; He here alludes to

Arganchonius, who lived, according to Lucian, a hundred and fifty years; and reigned, according to Herodotus, eighty. See Barnes.

This is composed of two fragments; the seventieth and eighty-first in Barnes. They are both found in Eustathius.

• Three fragments form this little ode, all of which are preserved in Athenæus. They are the eighty-second, seventyfifth, and eighty-third, in Barnes.

And every guest, to shade his head,

Three little fragrant chaplets spread ;] Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands

were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a courtesan, who, in order to gratify three lovers, without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each wis satisfied with his favor, and flattered himself with the preference.

This circumstance resembles very much the subject of one of the tensons of Savari de Mauléon, a troubadour. See L'Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. The recital is a curious picture of the puerile gallantries of chivalry.

[blocks in formation]

1 Compiled by Barnes, from Athenæus, Hephæstion, and Arsenius. See Barnes, 80th.

2 This I have formed from the eighty-fourth and eightyfifth of Barnes's edition. The two fragments are found in Athenæus.

3 The nursling fawn, that in some shade

Its antler'd mother leaves behind, &c.] In the original:-
Ος εν ύλη κερόεσσης
Απολειφθεις ύπο

μήτρος.

"Horned" here, undoubtedly, seems a strange epithet; Madame Dacier however observes, that Sophocles, Callimachus, &c., have all applied it in the very same manner, and she seems to agree in the conjecture of the scholiast upon Pindar, that perhaps horns are not always peculiar to the males. I think we may with more ease conclude it to be a license of the poet, "jussit habere puellam cornua."

4 This fragment is preserved by the scholiast upon Aristophanes, and is the eighty-seventh in Barnes.

ODE LXXV.7

SPIRIT of Love, whose locks unroll'd, Stream on the breeze like floating gold;

This is to be found in Hephæstion, and is the eightymath of Barnes's edition.

I have omitted, from among these scraps, a very considerable fragment imputed to our poet, Ξανθη δ' Ευρυπυλη μέλει, &c., which is preserved in the twelfth book of Athenæus, and is the ninety-first in Barnes. If it was really Anacreon who wrote it, "nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi." It is in a style of gross satire, nd abounds with expressions that never could be gracefully translated.

• A fragment preserved by Dion Chrysostom. Orat. ii. de Regno. See Barnes, 93.

This fragment, which extant in Athenæus, (Barnes, 101,) is supposed, on the authority of Chazıæleon, to have been addressed to Sappho. We have also a stanza attributed to her, which some romancers have supposed to be her answer to Anacreon. "Mais par malheur, (as Bayle says,) Sappho vint au monde environ cent ou six vingt ans avant Anacréon." -Nouvelles de la Rép. des Lett. tom. ii. de Novembre, 1684. The following is her fragment, the compliment of which is

« ПретходнаНастави »