ODE LXIL 123

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;124
Let not the fiery god be single,

But with the nymphs in union mingle.

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 soothes and blesses!
And while the temperate bowl we wreathe,
In concert let our voices breathe,
Beguiling every hour along
With harmony of soul and song.

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, it 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 LXIII.

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.

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!
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 LXV.125

LIKE some wanton filly sporting,
Maid of Thrace, thou fly'st my courting.

ODE LXVI.126

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!
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 unrivall'd grace discloses, 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 !!"

ODE LXXV.131

SPIRIT of Love, whose locks unroll'd,
Stream on the breeze like floating gold;
Come, within a fragrant cloud

Blushing with light, thy votary shroud;
And, on those wings that sparkling play,
Waft, oh, waft me hence away!
Love! my soul is full of thee,
Alive to all thy luxury.

But she, the nymph for whom I glow,
The lovely Lesbian mocks my woe;
Smiles at the chill and hoary hues,
That time upon my forehead strews.
Alas! I fear she keeps her charms,
In store for younger, happier arms!

And flitting onward seems to say, "Fare thee well, thou'st had thy day!"

CUPID, whose lamp has lent the ray, That lights our life's meandering way, That God, within this bosom stealing, Hath waken'd a strange, mingled feeling Which pleases, though so sadly teasing, And teases, though so sweetly pleasing!

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

AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, are found some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a sort of Coronis to this work. But I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety; and that a frequent recurrence, in them, of the same thought, would render a collection of such poems uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, selected from the number, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those ancient tributes to the fame of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but designing originally a translation of all that are extant on the subject, I endeavored to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase.

Cold, cold that heart, which while on earth it dwelt
All the sweet frenzy of love's passion felt.
And yet, oh Bard! thou art not mute in death,
Still do we catch thy lyre's luxurious breath;1
And still thy songs of soft Bathylla bloom,
Green as the ivy round thy mould'ring tomb.
Nor yet has death obscured thy fire of love,
For still it lights thee through the Elysian grove;
Where dreams are thine, that bless th' elect alone,
And Venus calls thee even in death her own!

OH stranger! if Anacreon's shell135
Has ever taught thy heart to swell196
With passion's throb or pleasure's sigh,
In pity turn, as wand'ring nigh,
And drop thy goblet's richest tear137
In tenderest libation here!

So shall my sleeping ashes thrill
With visions of enjoyment still.
Not even in death can I resign

The festal joys that once were mine,
When harmony pursued my ways,
And Bacchus wanton'd 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, unbless'd by wine
Divinity itself divine!

Ar length thy golden hours have wing'd their flight,
And drowsy death that eyelid steepeth;
Thy harp that whisper'd through each lingering
night,138

How 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, hath fled,
And with her blest Anacreon slumbers !199

Farewell! thou hadst a pulse for every dart

That mighty Love could scatter from his quiver; And each new beauty found in thee a heart, Which thou, with all thy heart and soul, didst give her !140

(1) The History of Anacreon, by Gaçon, (le Poète sans fard, as he styles himself,) is professedly a romance; nor does Mademoiselle Scuderi, from whom he borrowed the idea, pretend to historical veracity in her account of Anacreon and Sappho. These, then, are allowable. But how can Barnes be forgiven, who, with all the confidence of a biographer, traces every wandering of the poet, and settles him at last, in his old age, at a country villa near Téos?

(2) The learned Bayle has detected some infidelities of quotation in Le Fevre. (Dictionnaire Historique, &c.) Madame Dacier is not more accurate than her father: they have almost made Anacreon prime minister to the monarch of Samos.

(3) The Asiatics were as remarkable for genius as for luxury. "Ingenia Asiatica inclyta per gentes fecère Poetæ, Anacreon, inde Mimnermus et Antimachus," &c.-Solinus.

(4) I have not attempted to define the particular Olympiad, but have adopted the idea of Bayle, who says, "Je n'ai point marqué d'Olympiade; car pour un homme qui a vécu 85 ans, il me semble que l'on ne doit point s'enfermer dans des bornes si étroites."

(5) This mistake is founded on a false interpretation of a very obvious passage in Plato's Dialogue on Temperance; it originated with Madame Dacier, and has been received implicitly by many. Gail, a late editor of Anacreon, seems to claim to himself the merit of detecting this error; but Bayle had observed it before him.

(6) In the romance of Clelia, the anecdote to which I allude is told of a young girl, with whom Anacreon fell in love while she personated the god Apollo in a mask. But here Madeboiselle Scuderi consulted nature more than truth.

(7) There is a very interesting French poem founded upon this anecdote, imputed to Desyvetaux, and called "Anacreon Citoyen."

(8) Fabricius appears not to trust very implicitly in this story. It must be confessed that Lucian, who tells us that Sophocles was choked by a grape-stone, in the very same treatise mentions the longevity of Anacreon, and yet is silent on the manner of his death. Could he have been ignorant of such a remarkable coincidence, or, knowing, could he have neglected to remark it? See Regnier's introduction to his

Anacreon.

(9) Barnes is convinced (but very gratuitously) of the synchronism of Anacreon and Sappho. Fabricius thinks that they might have been contemporary, but considers their amour as a tale of imagination. Vossius rejects the idea entirely; as do also Olaus Borrichius and others.

(10) An Italian poet, in some verses on Belleau's translation of Anacreon, pretends to imagine that our bard did not feel Es he wrote:

To Love and Bacchus ever young

While sage Anacreon touch'd the lyre,

He neither felt the loves he sung,

Nor fill'd his bowl to Bacchus higher.

Those flowery days had faded long, When youth could act the lover's part; And passion trembled in his song,

But never, never, reach'd his heart.

(11) Anacreon's character has been variously colored. Barnes lingers on it with enthusiastic admiration; but he is always extravagant, if not sometimes also a little profane. Baillet runs too much into the opposite extreme, exaggerating also the testimonies which he has consulted; and we cannot surely agree with him when he cites such a compiler as Athenæus, as "un des plus savans critiques de l'antiquité." -Judgment des Sçavans, M. CV.

Barnes could hardly have read the passage to which he refers, when he accuses Le Fevre of having censured our poet's character in a note on Longinus; the note in question being manifest irony, in allusion to some censure passed upon Le Fevre for his Anacreon. It is clear, indeed, that praise rather than censure is intimated. See Johannes Vulpius, (de Utilitate Poëtices,) who vindicates our poet's reputation.

(12) It is taken from the Bibliotheca of Fulvius Ursinus. Bellori has copied the same head into his Imagines. Johannes Faber, in his description of the coin of Ursinus, mentions another head on a very beautiful cornelian, which he supposes was worn in a ring by some admirer of the poet. In the Iconographia of Canini there is a youthful head of Anacreon from a Grecian medal, with the letters TEIOΣ around it; on the reverse there is a Neptune, holding a spear in his right hand, and a dolphin, with the word TIANAN inscribed, in the left; "volendoci denotare (says Canini) che quelle cittadini la coniassero in honore del suo compatriota poeta." There is also among the coins of De Wilde one, which though it bears no effigy, was probably struck to the memory of Anacreon. It has the word OI2N, encircled with an ivy crown. "At quidni respicit hæc corona Anacreontem, nobilem lyricum ?"-De Wilde.

(13). Besides those which are extant, he wrote hymns, elegies, epigrams, &c. Some of the epigrams still exist. Horace, in addition to the mention of him, (lib. iv. od. 9,) alludes also to a poem of his upon the rivalry of Circe and Penelope in the affections of Ulysses, lib. i. od. 17; and the scholiast upon Nicander cites a fragment from a poem upon Sleep by Anacreon, and attributes to him likewise a medicinal treatise. Fulgentius mentions a work of his upon the war between Jupiter and the Titans, and the origin of the consecration of the eagle.