ODE LXXVIII. WOULD that I were a tuneful lyre, Would that I were a golden vase, 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 LET me resign a wretched breath, I KNOW thou lov'st a brimming measure, 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 many a fount shall there distil, And every fount be milky showers. Thus, shade of him whom Nature taught Thus, after death, if spirits feel, Thou mayst, from odours round thee streaming, And live again in blissful dreaming! HERE sleeps Anacreon, in this ivied shade; And yet, O Bard! thou art not mute in death: Nor yet has death obscured thy fire of love, O STRANGER! if Anacreon's shell AT length thy golden hours have winged their flight, Thy harp, that whispered through each lingering night, She too, for whom that harp profusely shed She, the young spring of thy desires, has fled, 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, But far be thou, oh! far, unholy vine, Thy god himself now blushes to confess, Since poor Anacreon's death! |