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. Of rosy youths and virgins fair, 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 lovo 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." Muse of the Lyre! illume my dream, Thy Phæbus is my fancy's theme; And hallow'd is the liarp 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 ! ODE LX.2 Awake to life, my sleeping shell, To Phæbus 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, But, pause, my soul, no more, no more Enthusiast, 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 pred 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 smull 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. 9 And how the tender, timid maid Flew trembling to the kindly shade, &c.] Original : Το μεν εκπεφευγε κεντρον, , Φυσεως δ' αμειψε μορφην. I find the word Kevt pov here has a double force, as it also signifies that "omnium parentem, quam sanctus Noma, &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 ovocws, thus: Το μεν εκπεφευγε κεντρον Φυσεως, δ' αμειψε μορφην. * Still be Anacreon, still inspire The descant of the Teian lyre :) The original is Tor Are axpcovia pepov. 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. Tov Avaxpcovra uiuov, “ Imitate Anacreon." Such is the lesson given us by the lyrist; and if, in poetry, a simple ele gance of sentiment, enriched by the most playful felicities of fancy, be a charm which invites or deserves imitation, where Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes; shall we find such a guide as Anacreon ? In morality, too, Eripuere jocos, venerem, convivia, ludum. with some little reserve, we need not blush, I think, to follow The wing of every passing day in his footsteps. For, if his song be the language of his Withers some blooming joy away; heart, though luxurious and relaxed, he was artless and be And wafts from our enamor'd arms nevolent; and who would not forgive a few irregularities, The banquet's mirth, the virgin's charms. when atoned for by virtues so rare and so endearing ? When * Dreary is the thought of dying, &c.) Regnier, a libertine we think of the sentiment in those lines : French poet, has written some sonnets on the approach of Away! I hate the sland'rous dart, death, full of gloomy and trembling repentance. Chaulieu, Which steals to wound th' unwary heart, however, supports more consistently the spirit of the Epicahow many are there in the world, to whom we would wish rean philosopher. See his poem, addressed to the Marquis to say, Τον Ανακρέοντα μιμου! de Lasare1 Here ends the last of the odes in the Vatican MS., whose Plus j'approche du terme et moins je le redoute, &c. authority helps to confirm the genuine antiquity of them all, 6 And, when once the journey's o'er, though a few have stolen among the number, which we may Ah! we can return no more !) Scaliger, upon Catullus's hesitate in attributing to Anacreon. In the little essay pre well-known lines, “Qui nunc it per iter, &c." remarks that fixed to this translation, I observed that Barnes has quoted Acheron, with the same idea, is called avetodos by Theocrithis manuscript incorrectly, relying upon an imperfect copy tus, and dvoerdpojos by Nicander. of it which Isaac Vossins had taken. I shall just mention 6 This ode consists of two fragments, which are to be found two or three instances of this inaccuracy—the first which occur to me. In the ode of the Dove, on the words Itepool of their tendency, has combined into one. I think this a very in Athenæus, book x., and which Barnes, from the similarity crykahvw, he says, “ Vatican MS. ovoriagwv, etiam Prisciano invito :" but the MS. reads ovvxalvyw, with ovokiaOW justifiable liberty, and have adopted it in some other frag ments of our poet. interlined. Degen too, on the same line, is somewhat in Degen refers us here to verses of Uz, lib. iv., " der Trinerror. In the twenty-second ode of this series, line thir ker." teenth, the MS. has revin with ai interlined, and Barnes impates to it the reading of revon. In the fifty-seventh, line 7 But let the water amply flow, twelfth, he professes to have preserved the reading of the To cool the grape's intemperate glow ; &c.] It was AmMS. Alanuevn d'Er' aurn, while the latter has alınuevos phictyon who first taught the Greeks to mix water with their &' <r' avra. Almost all the other annotators have trans- wine; in commemoration of which circumstance they erectplanted these errors from Barnes. ed altars to Bacchus and the nymphs. On this mythological * The intrusion of this melancholy ode, among the careless allegory the following epigram is founded: levities of our poet, reminds us of the skeletons which the Ardentem ex utero Semeles lavere Lyæum Egyptians used to hang up in their banqnet-rooms, to incul Najades, extincto fulminis igne sacri; cate a thought of mortality even amidst the dissipations of Cum nymphis igitur tractabilis, at sine nymphis mirth. If it were not for the beauty of its numbers, the Candenti rursus fulinine corripitur. Teian Muse should disown this ode. "Quid habet illius, PIERIUS VALERIANUI. illius quæ spirabat amores ?" Which is, non verbum verbo,– To Stobæus we are indebted for it. While heavenly fire consumed his Theban dame, ? Bloomy graces, dalliance gay, A Naiad caught young Bacchus from the flame, All the flowers of life decay.) Horace often, with feeling And dipp'd him burning in her purest lymph; and elegance, deplores the fugacity of human enjoyments. Hence, still he loves the Naiad's crystal urn, See book ii. ode 11; and thus in the second epistle, book And when his native fires too fiercely burn, Seeks the cool waters of the fountain-nymph. For though the bowl's the grave of sadness, ODE LXV.4 ODE LXIII. To Love, the soft and blooming child, LIKE some wanton filly sporting, ODE LXIV.? Haste thee, nymph, whose well-aim'd spear ODE LXVI. 1 "This fragment is preserved in Clemens Alexandrinus, Dacier conjectures) on the occasion of some battle, in which Btrom. lib. vi, and in Arsenius, Collect. Græc."--Barnes. the Magnesians had been defeated. It appears to have been the opening of a hymn in praiso of Love. * This ode, which is addressed to some Thracian girl, exists in Heraclides, and has been imita ted very frequently 3 This hymn to Diana is extant in Hephæstion. There is hy Horace, as all the annotators have remarked. Madame an anecdote four poet, which has led some to doubt whether Dacter rejects the allegory, which runs so obviously through he ever wrote any odes of this kind. It is related by the the poem, and supposes it to have been addressed to a young Scholiast upon Pindar (Isthmionic. od. ii. v. 1, as cited by mare belonging to Polycrates. Barnes) that Anacreon being asked, why he addressed all his Pierius, in the fourth book of his Hieroglyphics, cites this hymns to women, and none to the deities? answered, “Be ode, and informs us that the horse was the hieroglyphical cause women are niy deities." emblem of pride. I have assumed, it will be seen, in reporting this anecdote, the same liberty which I have thought it right to take in 6 This ode is introduced in the Romance of Theodorus translating some of the odes; and it were to be wished that Prodromus, and is that kind of epithalamium which was sung these little infidelities were always allowable in interpreting like a scolium at the nuptial banquet. the writings of the ancients; thus, when nature is forgotten Among the many works of the impassioned Sappho, of in the original, in the translation " tamen usque recurret." which time and ignorant superstition have deprived as, the 3 Turn, to Lethe's river turn, loss of her epithalamiums is not one of the least that we deThere thy vanquish'd people mourn!] Lethe, a river of plore. The following lines are cited as a relic of one of those Ionia, according to Strabo, falling into the Meander. In its poems: neighborhood was the city called Magnesia, in favor of Ολβιε γαμβρε, σοι μεν δη γαμος ώς αραο, whose inhabitants our poet is supposed to have addressed Εκτετελεστ', εχεις δε παρθενον αν αρμο. this supplication to Diana. It was written (as Madame See Scaliger, in his Poetics, on the Epithalamium. ODE LXVII. And oh! thou nuptial Power, to theo Rich in bliss, I proudly scorn ODE LXVIII. Look on thy bride, too happy boy, Now Neptune's month ur sky deforms, Not more the rose, the queen of flowers, ODE LXIX. They wove the lotus band to deck 1 And foster there an infant tree, Argarthonius, who lived, according to Lucian, a hundred To boom like her, and tower like theel] Original Kura apd fifty years; and reigned, according to Herodotus, eighty. ριττος δε πεφυκοι σευ ενι κηπω. Passeratius, upon the words See Barnes. * com castum amisit florem," in the Nuptial Song of Ca. * This is composed of two fragments; the seventieth and tullus, alter explaining "flos” in somewhat a similar sepse to that which Gaulminus attributes to podov, says, “Hortum eighty-first in Barnes. They are both found in Eustathius. quoque vocant in quo flos ille carpitur, et Græcis knRON COTI 6 Three fragments form this little ode, all of which are preτο εφηβαιον γυναικων.» served in Athenæus. They are the eighty-second, seventyI may remark, in passing, that the author a the Greek fifth, and eighty-third, in Barnes. version of this charming ode of Catullus, bus neglected a most striking and anacreontic beauty in thore verses “ Ut flos . And every guest, to shade his head, in septis, &c.” which is the repetition the line, "Multi Three little fragrant chaplets spread ;] Longepierre, to illum pueri. multæ optavère pnellæ," with the slight altera- give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands tion of pulli and nullæ. Catullus hiinself, however, has were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a courtebeen equally injudicious in his wrsion of the famous ode of san, who, in order to gratify three lovers, without leaving Sappho; having translated yedwoas iuepoev, but onitted all cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let notice of the accompanying charm, áov owvovgas. Horace the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of has caught the spirit of it more faithfully: the third ; so that each mois satisfied with his favor, and flattered himself with the preference. Dulce ridestem Lalagen amabo, This circumstance resembles very much the subject of one Duke loquentem. of the lensons of Savari de Mauléon, a troubadour. See * This fragment is preserved in the third book of Strabo. L'Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours. The recital is a cus of the Tartessian prince my own ;) He here alludes to rious picture of the puerile gallantries of chivalry. 1 Compiled by Barnes, from Athenæus, Hephæstion, and 6 This is to be found in Hephæstion, and is the eightyArsenius. See Barnes, 80th. ninth of Barnes's edition. ? This I have formed from the eighty-fourth and eighty Iwave omitted, from among these scraps, a very considerfifth of Barnes's edition. The two fragments are found in able fragment inputed to our poet, Ξανθη δ' Ευρυπυλη μελει, &c., which is preserved in the twelfth book of Athenæus, and Athenæus. is the ninet:-first in Barnes. If it was really Anacreon who 3 The nursling fawn, that in some shade Its antler'd mother leaves behind, &c.] In the original :- of gross satire, «nd abounds with expressions that never wrote it, “nil fuit unquam sic impar sibi." It is in a style "Ος εν ύλη κεροεσσης could be gracefully translated. Απολειφθεις υπο μητρος. . • A fragment presetred by Dion Chrysostom. Orat. ii. de “Horned" here, undoubtedly, seems a strange epithet ; Regno. See Barnes, 93. Madame Dacier however observes, that Sophocles, Callima ? This fragment, which k extant in A benæus, (Barnes, chus, &c., have all applied it in the very same manner, and 101,) is supposed, on the authority of Chazıæleon, to have she seems to agree in the conjecture of the scholiast upon been addressed to Sappho. We have also a stanza attributed Pindar, that perhaps horns are not always peculiar to the to her, which some romancers havosupposed to be her answer males. I think we may with more ease conclude it to be a to Anacreon. “Mais par malheur, (us Bayle says.) Sappho license of the poet, “jussit habere puellam cornua." vint au monde environ cent ou six vingt ans avant Anacréon." * This fragment is preserved by the scholiast upon Aristo -Nouvelles de la Rép, des Lett. tom. ii. de Novembre, 1684. phanes, and is the eighty-seventh in Barnes. The following is her fragment, the compliment of which is |