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And there's an end-for ah, you know

See, in yonder flowery braid,
Cull'd for thee, my blushing maid,'
How the rose, of orient glow,
Mingles with the lily's snow;
Mark, how sweet their tints agree,
Just, my girl, like thee and me!

They drink but little wine below!

ODE LII.2

AWAY, away, ye men of rules,
What have I to do with schools?

They'd make me learn, they'd make me think,
But would they make me love and drink?
Teach me this, and let me swim
My soul upon the goblet's brim;
Teach me this, and let me twine
Some fond, responsive heart to mine,
For, age begins to blanch my brow,
I've time for naught but pleasure now.

Fly, and cool my goblet's glow At yonder fountain's gelid flow; I'll quaff, my boy, and calmly sink This soul to slumber as I drink. Soon, too soon, my jocund slave, You'll deck your master's grassy grave;

1 See, in yonder flowery braid,

Cull'd for thee, my blusking maid!] "In the same manner that Anacreon pleads for the whiteness of his locks, from the beauty of the color in garlands, a shepherd, in Theocritus, endeavors to recommend his black hair :

Και το τον μελαν εστι, και & γραπτα υακινθος,
Αλλ' έμπας εν τοις στεφάνοις τα πρώτα λέγονται."
Longepierre, Barnes, &c.

2 "This is doubtless the work of a more modern poet than Anacreon; for at the period when he lived rhetoricians were not known."-Degen.

Though this ode is found in the Vatican manuscript, I am much inclined to agree in this argument against its authenticity; for though the dawnings of the art of rhetoric might already have appeared, the first who gave it any celebrity was Corax of Syracuse, and he flourished in the century after Anacreon.

Our poet anticipated the ideas of Epicurus, in his aversion to the labors of learning, as well as his devotion to voluptousness. Πασαν παιδείαν μακαριοι φεύγετε, said the philosopher of the garden in a letter to Pythocles

Teach me this, and let me twine

Some fond responsive heart to mine.] By xpvans Appodrns here, I understand some beautiful girl, in the same manner that Avatus is often used for wine. "Golden" is frequently an epithet of beauty. Thus in Virgil, "Venus aurea;" and in Propertius, "Cynthia aurea." Tibullus, however, calls an old woman "golden."

The translation d'Autori Anonimi, as usual, wantons on tais passage of Anacreon:

ODE LIII.

WHEN I behold the festive train
Of dancing youth, I'm young again!
Memory wakes her magic trance,
And wings me lightly through the dance
Come, Cybeba, smiling maid!
Cull the flower and twine the braid;
Bid the blush of summer's rose

Burn upon my forehead's snows;
And let me, while the wild and young
Trip the mazy dance along,
Fling my heap of years away,
And be as wild, as young, as they.
Hither haste, some cordial soul!
Help to my lips the brimming bowl!
And you shall see this hoary sage
Forget at once his locks and age.
He still can chant the festive hymn,
He still can kiss the goblet's brim ;*
As deeply quaff, as largely fill,
And play the fool right nobly still.

Em' insegni con piu rare
Forme accorte d' involare
Ad amabile beltade

Il bel cinto d' onestade.

And there's an end-for ah, you know

They drink but little wine below !] Thus Mainard:-
La Mort nous guette; et quand ses lois
Nous ont enfermés une fois

Au sein d'une fosse profonde,
Adieu bons vins et bon repas;

Ma science ne trouve pas

Des cabarets en l'autre monde.

From Mainard, Gombauld, and De Cailly, old French poets, some of the best epigrams of the English language have been borrowed.

Bid the blush of summer's rose

Burn upon my forehead's snows; &c.] Licetus, in his Hieroglyphica, quoting two of our poet's odes, where he calls to his attendants for garlands, remarks, "Constat igitur floreas coronas poetis et potantibus in symposio convenire, non autem sapientibus et philosophiam affectantibus."-" It appears that wreaths of flowers were adapted for poets and revellers at banquets, but by no means became those who had pretensions to wisdom and philosophy." On this principle, in his 152d chapter, he discovers a refinement in Virgil, describing the garland of the poet Silenus, as fallen off; which distinguishes, he thinks, the divine intoxication of Silenus from that of common drunkards, who always wear their crowns while they drink. Such is the "labor ineptiarum" of commentators!

• He still can kiss the goblet's brim, &c.] Wine is pre

ODE LIV.1

METHINKS, the pictured bull we see
Is amorous Jove-it must be he!
How fondly blest he seems to bear
That fairest of Phoenician fair!
How proud he breasts the foamy tide,
And spurns the billowy surge aside!
Could any beast of vulgar vein
Undaunted thus defy the main?
No: he descends from climes above,
He looks the God, he breathes of Jove!"

ODE LV.3

WHILE we invoke the wreathed spring, Resplendent rose! to thee we'll sing

scribed by Galen, as an excellent medicine for old men: "Quod frigidos et humoribus expletos calefaciat, &c. ;" but Nature was Anacreon's physician.

There is a proverb in Eriphus, as quoted by Athenæus, which says, "that wine makes an old man dance, whether he will or not."

Λόγος εστ' αρχαίος, ου κακώς έχων,

Οινον λεγουσι τους γεροντας, ω πατερ,
Πείθειν χορεειν ου θέλοντας.

1"This ode is written upon a picture which represented the rape of Europa.”—Madame Dacier.

It may probably have been a description of one of those coins, which the Sidonians struck off in honor of Europa, representing a woman carried across the sea by a bull. Thus Natalis Comes, lib. viii. cap. 23. "Sidonii numismata cum fæmina tauri dorso insidente ac mare transfretante cuderunt in ejus honorem." In the little treatise upon the goddess of Syria, attributed very falsely to Lucian, there is mention of this coin, and of a temple dedicated by the Sidonians to Astarté, whom some, it appears, confounded with Europa. The poet Moschus has left a very beautiful idyl on the sory of Europa.

No: he descends from climes above,

He looks the God, he breathes of Jove!] Thus Moschus:

"All an

Κρυψε Θεον και τρεψε δεμας και γινετο ταύρος. The God forgot himself, his heaven, for love, And a bull's form belied th' almighty Jove. This ode is a brilliant panegyric on the rose. tiquity (says Barnes) has produced nothing more beautiful." From the idea of peculiar excellence, which the ancients attached to this flower, arose a pretty proverbial expression, used by Aristophanes, according to Suidas, poda μ' einkas, "You have spoken roses," a phrase somewhat similar to the "dire des fleurettes" of the French. In the same idea of excellence originated, I doubt not, a very curious application of the word fodov, for which the inquisitive reader may consult Gaulminus upon the epithalamium of our poet, where it is introduced in the romance of Theodorus. Muretus, in one of his elegies, calls his mistress his rose :Jam te igitur rursus teneo, formosula, jam te (Quid trepidas?) teneo; jam, rosa, te teneo. Now I again may clasp thee, dearest, What is there now, on earth, thou fearest ?

Eleg. 8.

Whose breath perfumes th' Olympian bowers;
Whose virgin blush, of chasten'd dye,
Enchants so much our mortal eye.
When pleasure's springtide season glows,
The Graces love to wreath the rose;
And Venus, in its fresh-blown leaves,"
An emblem of herself perceives.
Oft hath the poet's magic tongue
The rose's fair luxuriance sung;
And long the Muses, heavenly maids,
Have rear'd it in their tuneful shades.
When, at the early glance of morn,
It sleeps upon the glittering thorn,
"Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence,
To cull the timid flow'ret thence,
And wipe with tender hand 2way
The tear that on its blushes lay!
"Tis sweet to hold the infant stems,
Yet dropping with Aurora's gems,

Again these longing arms infold thee,
Again, my rose, again I hold thee.

This, like most of the terms of endearment in the modern Latin poets, is taken from Plautus; they were vulgar and colloquial in his tinc, but are among the elegancies of the modern Latinists.

Passeratius alludes to the ode before us, in the beginning of his poem on the Rose:

Carmine digna rosa est; vellem caneretur ut illam
Teius argutâ cecinit testudine vates.

4 Resplendent rose! to thee we'll sing; I have passed over the line συν έταιρει αύξει μέλπην, which is corrupt in this original reading, and has been very little improved by the annotators. I should suppose it to be an interpolation, if it were not for a line which occurs afterwards: φερε δη φυσιν Aɛywpεv.

And Venus, in its fresh-blown leaves, &c.] Belleau, in a note upon an old French poet, quoting the original here appodioier & a0vppa, translates it, "comme les délices et mignardises de Venus."

Oft hath the poet's magic tongue

The rose's fair luxuriance sung; &c.] The following is a fragment of the Lesbian poetess. It is cited in the romance of Achilles Tatius, who appears to have resolved the numbers into prose. Ει τοις ανθεσιν ήθελεν ὁ Ζευς επιθείναι βασιλέα, το ῥόδον αν των ανθεων εβασίλευε. γης εστι κυσμός, φυτων αγλα ΐσμα, οφθαλμος ανθεών, λειμώνος ερύθημα, κάλλος αστράπτον. Έρωτος πνει, Αφροδίτην προξένει, επείδεσι φύλλοις κομά ευκι νήτοις πετάλοις τρυφά, το πέταλον τῳ Ζεφυρῳ γελᾶ.

If Jove would give the leafy bowers
A queen for all their world of flowers,
The rose would be the choice of Jove,
And blush, the queen of every grove.
Sweetest child of weeping morning,
Gem, the vest of earth adorning,
Eye of gardens, light of lawns,
Nursling of soft summer dawns;
Love's own earliest sigh it breaths,
Beauty's brow with lustre wreaths,
And, to young Zephyr's warm caresses,
Spreads abroad its verdant tresses,
Till, blushing with the wanton's play,
Its cheek wears e'en a richer ray!

And fresh inhale the spicy sighs That from the weeping buds arise.

When revel reigns, when mirth is high, And Bacchus beams in every eye, Our rosy fillets scent exhale, And fill with balm the fainting gale. There's naught in nature bright or gay, Where roses do not shed their ray. When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes ;' Young nymphs betray the rose's hue, O'er whitest arms it kindles through. In Cytherea's form it glows, And mingles with the living snows.

The rose distils a healing balm, The beating pulse of pain to calm; Preserves the cold inurned clay," And mocks the vestige of decay:3 An when, at length, in pale decline, Its florid beauties fade and pine, Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Diffuses odor even in death!*

Oh! whence could such a plant have sprung? Listen,-for thus the tale is sung.

When morning paints the orient skies,

Her fingers burn with roscate dyes; &c.] In the original here, he enumerates the many epithets of beauty, borrowed from roses, which were used by the poets, wapa тwv oopwv. We see that poets were dignified in Greece with the title of sages: even the careless Anacreon, who lived but for love and voluptuousness, was called by Plato the wise Anacreon -"fuit hæc sapientia quondam."

Preserves the cold inurned clay, &c.] He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming; and, perhaps, (as Barnes thinks,) to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector.-Homer's Iliad. It may likewise regard the ancient practice of putting garlands of roses on the dead, as in Statins, Theb. lib. x. 762.

-hi sertis, n. veris honore soluto

Accumulant artus, patriâque in sede reponunt
Corpus odoratum.

Where "veris honor," though it mean every kind of flowers, may seem more particularly to refer to the rose, which our poet in another ode calls tapos μɛλnua. We read, in the Hieroglyphics of Pierius, lib. lv., that some of the ancients used to order in their wills, that roses should be annually scattered on their tombs, and Pierius has adduced some sepnlchral inscriptions to this purpose.

3 And mocks the vestige of decay:] When he says that this flower prevails over time itself, he still alludes to its efficacy in einbalmment, (tenerâ poneret ossa rosa. Propert. lib. i. eleg. 17,) or perhaps to the subsequent idea of its fragrance surviving its beauty; for he can scarcely mean to praise for duration the "nimium breves flores" of the rose. Philostratus compares this flower with love, and says, that they both defy the influence of time; Xpovov de ovre Epws, ούτε ροδα οι δεν. Unfortunately the similitude lies not in their duration, but their transience.

A Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath

Diffuses odor even in death!] Thus Casper Barlæus, in his Ritus Nuptiarum :

When, humid, from the silvery stream,
Effusing beauty's warmest beam,
Venus appear'd, in flushing hues,
Mellow'd by ocean's briny dews;
When, in the starry courts above,
The pregnant brain of mighty Jove
Disclosed the nymph of azure glance,

The nymph who shakes the martial lance ;-
Then, then, in strange eventful hour,
The earth produced an infant flower,
Which sprung, in blushing glories dress'd,
And wanton'd o'er its parent breast.
The gods beheld this brilliant birth,
And hail'd the Rose, the boon of earth!
With nectar drops, a ruby tide,
The sweetly orient buds they dyed,"
And bade them bloom, the flowers dive
Of him who gave the glorious vine;
And bade them on the spangled thorn
Expand their bosoms to the morn.

ODE LVI.

HE, who instructs the youthful crew To bathe them in the brimmer's dew,

Ambrosium late rosa tunc quoque spargit odorem,
Cum fluit, aut multo languida sole jacet.
Nor then the rose its odor loses,

When all its flushing beauties die;
Nor less ambrosial balm diffuses,

When wither'd by the solar eye.
With nectar drops, a ruby tide,

The sweetly orient buds they dyed, &c.] The author of the "Pervigilium Veneris" (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the labored luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adonis

-rosa

Fusa aprino de cruore

according to the emendation of Lipsius. In the following epigram this hue is differently accounted for :

Illa quidem studiosa suum defendere Adonim,
Gradivus stricto quem petit ense ferox,
Affixit duris vestigia cæca rosetis,

Albaque divino picta cruore rosa est.
While the enamor'd queen of joy
Flies to protect her lovely boy,

On whom the jealous war-god rushes;
She treads upon a thorned rose,

And while the wound with crimson flows,

The snowy flow'ret feels her blood, and blushes:

6 "Compare with this elegant ode the verses of Uz, lib. i. 'die Weinlese.'"-Degen.

This appears to be one of the hymns which were sung at the anniversary festival of the vintage; one of the criλnviol buroi, as our poet himself terms them in the fifty-ninth ode. We cannot help feeling a sort of reverence for these classic relics of the religion of antiquity. Horace may be supposed to have written the nineteenth ode of his second book, and the twenty fath of the third, for some bacchanalian celebration of this kind.

And taste, uncloy'd by rich excesses,
All the bliss that wine possesses;
He, who inspires the youth to bound
Elastic through the dance's round,—
Bacchus, the god again is here,
And leads along the blushing year;
The blushing year with vintage teems,
Ready to shed those cordial streams,
Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,
Illuminate the sons of earth!!

Then, when the ripe and vermil wine,-
Blest infant of the pregnant vine,
Which now in mellow clusters swells,-
Oh! when it bursts its roseate cells,
Brightly the joyous stream shall flow,
To balsam every mortal wo!

None shall be then cast down or weak,
For health and joy shall light each cheek;
No heart will then desponding sigh,
For wine shall bid despondence fly.
Thus-till another autumn's glow
Shall bid another vintage flow.

ODE LVII.2

WHOSE was the artist hand that spread
Upon this disk the ocean's bed?3
And, in a flight of fancy, high

1 Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,

Illuminate the sons of earth!] In the original norov αστονον κομίζων. Madame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Mere, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See Bayle, art. Heléne.

As aught on earthly wing can fly,
Depicted thus, in semblance warm,
The Queen of Love's voluptuous form
Floating along the silv'ry sea

In beauty's naked majesty!

Oh! he hath given th' enamor'd sight
A witching banquet of delight,

Where, gleaming through the waters clear,
Glimpses of undream'd charms appear,
And all that mystery loves to screen,
Fancy, like Faith, adores unseen.'

Light as the leaf, that on the breeze
Of summer skims the glassy seas,
She floats along the ocean's breast,
Which undulates in sleepy rest;
While stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the heaving billows.
Her bosom, like the dew-wash'd rose,"
Her neck, like April's sparkling snows,
Illume the liquid path she traces,
And burn within the stream's embraces.
Thus on she moves, in languid pride,
Encircled by the azure tide,

As some fair lily o'er a bed
Of violets bends its graceful head.

Beneath their queen's inspiring glance,
The dolphins o'er the green sea dance,
Bearing in triumph young Desire,"
And infant Love with smiles of fire!

And all that mystery loves to screen,

Fancy, like Faith, adores unseen, &c.] The picture here has all the delicate character of the semi-reducta Venus, and affords a happy specimen of what the poetry of passion ought to be-glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of description, which, like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, is impervious to every beam but that of fancy.

Her bosom, like the dew-wash'd rose, &c.] "Podewr (says an anonymous annotator) is a whimsical epithet for the bosom." Neither Catullus nor Gray have been of his opinion. The former has the expression,

2 This ode is a very animated description of a picture of Venus on a discus, which represented the goddess in her first emergence from the waves. About two centuries after our poet wrote, the pencil of the artist Apelles embellished this subject, in his famous painting of the Venus Anadyo- And the latter, mené, the model of which, as Pliny informs us, was the beautiful Campaspe, given to him by Alexander; though, according to Natalis Comes, lib. vii. cap. 16, it was Phryne who sat to Apelles for the face and breast of this Venus.

There are a few blemishes in the reading of the ode before us, which have influenced Faber, Heyne, Brunck, &c. to denounce the whole poem as spurious. But, non ego paucis offendar maculis." I think it is quite beautiful enough to be authentic.

3 Whose was the artist hand that spread

Upon this disk the ocean's bed?] The abruptness of apa τις τόρευσε ποντον is finely expressive of sudden admiration, and is one of those beauties which we cannot but admire in their source, though, by frequent imitation, they are now become familiar and unimpressive.

En hic in roseis latet papillis;

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd hours, &c. Crottus, a modern Latinist, might indeed be censured for too vague a use of the epithet "rosy," when he applies it to the eyes" e roseis oculis."

6

-young Desire, &c.] In the original "Iμɛpos, who was the same deity with Jocus among the Romans. Aurelius Augurellus has a poem beginning

Invitat olim Bacchus ad cœnam suos
Comon, Jocum, Cupidinem.

Which Parnell has closely imitated :-
Gay Bacchus, liking Estcourt's wine,
A noble meal bespoke us;
And for the guests that were to dine,
Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus, &c.

While, glittering through the silver waves,
The tenants of the briny caves
Around the pomp their gambols play,
And gleam along the watery way.

ODE LVIII.

WHEN Gold, as fleet as zephyr's pinion,
Escapes like any faithless minion,"
And flies me, (as he flies me ever,)3
Do I pursue him? never, never!
No, let the false deserter go,

For who could court his direst foe?
But, when I feel my lighten'd mind
No more by grovelling gold confined,
Then loose I all such clinging cares,
And cast them to the vagrant airs.
Then feel I, too, the Muse's spell,
And wake to life the dulcet shell,
Which, roused once more, to beauty sings,
While love dissolves along the strings!

But scarcely has my heart been taught How little Gold deserves a thought, When, lo! the slave returns once more, And with him wafts delicious store

Of racy wine, whose genial art

In slumber seals the anxious heart.
Again he tries my soul to sever

From love and song, perhaps forever!

Away, deceiver! why pursuing Ceaseless thus my heart's undoing? Sweet is the song of amorous fire, Sweet the sighs that thrill the lyre; Oh! sweeter far than all the gold

Thy wings can waft, thy mines can hold.

Well do I know thy arts, thy wiles

They wither'd Love's young wreathed smiles;
And o'er his lyre such darkness shed,

I thought its soul of song was fled!
They dash'd the wine-cup, that, by him,
Was fill'd with kisses to the brim."
Go-fly to haunts of sordid men,
But come not near the bard again.
Thy glitter in the Muse's shade,
Scares from her bower the tuneful maid;
And not for worlds would I forego
That moment of poetic glow,

When my full soul, in Fancy's stream,
Pours o'er the lyre its swelling theme.
Away, away! to worldlings hence,
Who feel not this diviner sense;
Give gold to those who love that pest,—
But leave the poet poor and blest.

ODE LIX.5

RIPEN'D by the solar beam,
Now the ruddy clusters teem,
In osier baskets borne along
By all the festal vintage throng

1

1 I have followed Barnes's arrangement of this ode, which, though deviating somewhat from the Vatican MS., appears to me the more natural order.

2 When Gold, as fleet as zephyr's pinion,

Escapes like any faithless minion, &c.] In the original Ο δραπέτης ὁ χρυσος. There is a kind of pun in these words, as Madame Dacier has already remarked; for Chrysos, which signifies gold, was also a frequent name for a slave. In one of Lucian's dialogues, there is, I think, a similar play upon the word, where the followers of Chrysippus are called golden fishes. The puns of the ancients are, in general, even more vapid than our own; some of the best are those recorded of Diogenes.

2 And flies me, (as he flies me ever,) &c.] Aɛi d', aɛi μe devyet. This grace of iteration has already been taken notice of. Though sometimes merely a playful beauty, it is peculiarly expressive of impassioned sentiment, and we may easily believe that it was one of the many sources of that energetic sensibility which breathed through the style of Sappho. See Gyrald. Vet. Poet. Dial. 9. It will not be said that this is a mechanical ornament by any one who can feel its charm in those lines of Catullus, where he complains of the infidelity of his mistress, Lesbia:

Cell, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,

Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam,
Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
Nunc, &c.

Si sic omnia dixisset!-but the rest does not bear citation.

They dash'd the wine-cup, that, by him,
Was fill'd with kisses to the brim.] Original:-

Φιλημάτων δε κείνων,

Πυθων κυπελλο κίρνης.

Horace has "Desiderique temperare poculum," not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importing the lovephiltres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favorite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim :"Or leave a kiss within the cup,

And I'll not ask for wine."

As in Ben Jonson's translation from Philostratus; and LuΗ Ίνα και πίνης άμα cian has a conceit upon the same idea, kai piλns," "that you may at once both drink and kiss."

The title Envios buvos, which Barnes has given to this ode, is by no means appropriate. We have already had one of those hymns, (ode 56,) but this is a description of the vintage; and the title is ovov, which it bears in the Vatican MS., is more correct than any that have been suggested.. Degen, in the true spirit of literary skepticism, doubts that this ode is genuine, without assigning any reason for such a suspicion;-" non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare." But this is far from being satisfactory criticism.

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