ON LOVE.

ODE VII.

The god of Love-almighty power!
Once came to me in evil hour,
And beating with a purple wand,
My tardy footsteps did command.

Averse with him I run along,

Through rapids and through currents strong; On-on we hied, above the deeps,

O'er pendant rocks and woodland steeps: Still on I sped, through brier and brake,

But faultered, bitten by a snake;

I sunk! my throbbing heart leapt high,
And I was on the point to die.

Love, then his downy pinions spread,
And fanning gently o'er my head,
Taught a new life again to spring,
And every sense again to bring.

Then whispered he-Anacreon!
Thine surely is a heart of stone;

This faintness does too clearly prove,

How little thou wert formed to love!

Here is another specimen of the cruel mischief of the blind god;-it bears some similarity to the third ode, but not in so exquisite a style of composition. The design of this little. fiction, says Mr. Moore, is to intimate that much greater pain attends insensibility, than can ever result from the tenderest impressions of love. Mad. Dacier, says it is to shew us the irresistible nature of love, who can force obedience with the slightest weapons; a flower being as potent in his hands, as a bow and arrows. A writer of our own country has expressed this truth, in the following elegant lines :

Flavia, the least and slightest toy,

Can with resistless art employ;

This fan in meaner hands would prove,

An engine of small force in love:

Yet she, with graceful air and mein,

Nor to be told or safely seen

Directs its wanton motions so,

That it wounds more than Cupid's bow;

Gives coolness to the matchless dame,

To every other breast a flame.

I sunk! my throbbing heart leapt high.

The literal translation, is, my heart ascended to my nostrils,

which phrase is used by Homer; and in our own times, it is common to say, my heart leapt up to my mouth, whe suddenl startled or frightened.

Taught a new life again to spring, &c.

The facility with which Cupid heals ANACREON, informs us that the pleasures of love, easily make us forget the pains it may have occasioned.

ON HIS DREAM.

ODE VIII.

While through night supinely sleeping,
On sea-purple tapestry;

Flushed with wine my heart and leaping-
A bright vision met my eye.

Oh, what joys and raptures move me!
Sporting with a showy train

Of young virgins-beauteous, lovely,

The swift chace I urge amain.

Then some boys, than Bacchus softer,
Viewed my grey and hoary hair,
And with gamesone jest and laughter,
Vilified me for the fair.

But I heeded not their hisses:

Now on passion's headlong wing, I would kiss, but, oh! the blisses

I'd expected from me spring!

Wretched-wretched! lonely lying,

Mourning for the visioned train !
For the absent fair ones sighing,

Loud I pray to sleep again!

This is an extremely fine and delicate ode, containing a very ingenious fiction. Anacreon it would seem was not only a voluptuary in common life, but was haunted even in his dreams, by visions of rapture and delight.

On sea-purple tapestry.

Les grands Seigneurs en Grèce se couchoient sur des peaux, qu'ils faisoient teindre en pourpre. Mad. D'Acier.

Then some boys, than Bacchus softer.

Bacchus is represented by the poets, as a soft and everblooming youth.-See note to ode vi., ver. 13, supra.

Loud I pray to sleep again.

ANACREON wishes to sleep again, that he may recover the delightful visions that had so lately ravished his eyes. The gallantry of the dream, proceeds from his waking thoughts, which were ever gay aud voluptuous. Petronius has a parallel passage in one of his epigrams, commencing thus :

Somnia, quæ mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,

Non delubra Deum, &c.

And Ovid in his Epistle of Sappho to Phaon: thus translated

by Pope