And let me sing, in wild delight, Alcides' self, in days of yore, Imbrued his hands in youthful gore, And brandish'd, with a maniac joy, The quiver of th' expiring boy: And Ajax, with tremendous shield, Infuriate scour'd the guiltless field. But I, whose hands no weapon ask, No armor but this joyous flask; The trophy of whose frantic hours Js but a scatter'd wreath of flowers, Ev'n I can sing with wild delight, "I will-I will be mad to-night!" ODE X.1 How am I to punish thee, Ah, how thoughtless hast thou been ODE XI.4 "TELL me, gentle youth, I pray thee What in purchase shall I pay thee For this little waxen toy, Image of the Paphian boy?" Thus I said, the other day, To a youth who pass'd my way "Sir," (he answer'd, and the wine Answer'd all in Doric style,) "Take it, for a trifle take it; 'Twas not I who dared to make it; No, believe me, 'twas not I; Oh, it has cost me many a sigh, And I can no longer keep Little gods, who murder sleep!" "Here, then, here," (I said with joy, "Here is silver for the boy: He shall be my bosom guest, Idol of my pious breast!" Now, young Love, I have thee mi Warm me with that torch of thine; Make me feel as I have felt, Or thy waxen frame shall melt: We are here referred by Degen to that dull book, the Epistles of Alciphron, tenth epistle, third book; where Iophon complains to Eraston of being awakened by the crowing of a cock, from his vision of riches. 2 Silly swallow, prating thing, &c.] The loquacity of the swallow was proverbialized; thus Nicostratus: Ει το συνεχώς και πολλά και ταχέως λαλεῖν If in prating from morning till night The swallows are wiser by right, For they prattle much faster than we. 3 Or, as Tereus did, of old, &c.] Modern poet firmed the name of Philomel upon the nightingal respectable authorities among the ancients a metamorphose to Progne, and made Philomel t as Anacreon does here. 4 It is difficult to preserve with any grace th simplicity of this ode, and the humor of the turn it concludes. I feel, indeed, that the translatio pear vapid, if not ludicrous, to an English reader And I can no longer keep Little gods, who murder sleep!] I have not dered the epithet παντορεκτα ; if it has any mea is one, perhaps, better omitted. • I must burn with warm desire, Or thou, my boy-in yonder fire.] From this conjectures, that, whatever Anacreon might sometimes the inconveniences of old age, and from the power of Love a warmth which he cou expect from Nature. ODE XII. THEY tell how Atys, wild with love, ODE XIII. I WILL, I will, the conflict's past, And I'll consent to love at last. They tell how Atys, wild with love, Reams the mount and haunted grove ;] There are many Contradictory stories of the loves of Cybele and Atys. It is certain that he was mutilated, but whether by his own fury, or Cybele's jealousy, is a point upon which authors are not agreed. Cybde's name he howls around, &c.] I have here adopted the accentuation which Elias Andreas gives to Cybele: In montibus Cybelen Magno sonans boatu. 1 Oft too, by Claros' hallow'd spring, &c.] This fountain was in a grove, consecrated to Apollo, and situated between Colophon and Lebedos, in Ionia. The god had an oracle there. Scaliger thus alludes to it in his Anacreontica: Semel ut concitus œstro, Veluti qui Clarias aquas Ebibere loquaces, Quo plus canunt, plura volunt. While foating odors, &c.] Spaletti has quite mistaken the import of kopceces, as applied to the poet's mistress—“ Meâ fugatas amica"-thus interpreting it in a sense which mit want either delicacy or gallantry; if not, perhaps, both. And what did I unthinking do? I took to arms, undaunted, too;] Longepierre has here quoted an epigram from the Anthologia, in which the poet taranes Reason as the armor against Love. Ωπλισμοι προς ερωτα περι στερνοισι λογισμόν, Cupid has long, with smiling art, But, slighted in his boasted charms, I fought with Love! I fought with Love! Alas! then, unable to combat the two, Unfortunate warrior, what should I do? This idea of the irresistibility of Cupid and Bacchus united, is delicately expressed in an Italian poem, which is so truly Anacreontic, that its introduction here may be pardoned. It is an imitation, indeed, of our poet's sixth ode. Lavossi Amore in quel vicino fiume Ove giuro (Pastor) che bevend' io Bevei le fiamme, anzi l'istesso Dio, Ch'or con l'humide piume Lascivetto mi scherza al cor intorno. Ma che sarei s'io lo bevessi un giorno, Bacco, nel tuo liquore? Sarei, piu che non sono ebro d'Amore. I felt him to my bosom glide; And now the wily, wanton minion But ah, 'twere e'en more fatal far, If, Bacchus, in thy cup of fire, I found this flutt'ring, young desire: Then, then indeed my soul would prove, E'en more than ever, drunk with love! And, having now no other dart, He shot himself into my heart!] Dryden has parodied this thought in the following extravagant lines: -I'm all o'er Love; Nay, I am Love, Love shot, and shot so He shot himself into my breast at last. My heart-alas the luckless day! ODE XIV.1 COUNT me, on the summer trees, Then, when you have number'd these Count me all the flames I prove, 1 The poet, in this catalogue of his mistresses, means nothing more than, by a lively hyperbole, to inform us, that his heart, unfettered by any one object, was warm with devotion towards the sex in general. Cowley is indebted to this ode for the hint of his ballad, called "The Chronicle ;" and the learned Menage has imitated it in a Greek Anacreontic, which has so much ease and spirit, that the reader may not be displeased at seeing it here: ΠΡΟΣ ΒΙΩΝΑ Ει αλσεων τα φύλλα, Ορειάδας, Ναπαιας, Tell the foliage of the woods, All the gentle nymphs I love. Rhodes a pretty swarm can boast; Sum them all-of brown and fair You may count two thousand there. Oh! I'm such a roving elf, That the Queen of love herself, Though she practised all her wiles, Rosy blushes, wreathed smiles, All her beauty's proud endeavor Could not chain my heart forever. 2 Count me, on the summer trees, Every leaf, &c. This figure is called, by rhet Impossible, (advvarov,) and is very frequently n in poetry. The amatory writers have exhauste imagery by it, to express the infinite number of they require from the lips of their mistresses: in t led the way. -Quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox, Vesano satis, et super, Catullo est: As many stellar eyes of light, Envy can never tell th' amount. In the famed Corinthian grove, Where such countless wantons rove, &c.] Corin famous for the beauty and number of its courte was the deity principally worshipped by the peop constant prayer was, that the gods should increa ber of her worshippers. We may perceive from tion of the verb xоpir@tage, in Aristophanes, bricity of the Corinthians had become proverbia 4 There, indeed, are nymphs divine, Dangerous to a soul like mine !] “With justice attributed beauty to the women of Greece.”—I M. de Pauw, the author of Dissertations upon is of a different opinion; he thinks, that by a ca tiality of nature, the other sex had all the bea this supposition endeavors to account for a very pravation of instinct among that people. What, you stare? I pray you, peace! Or the nymphs, who, blushing sweet, Still in clusters, still remain ODE XV. TELL me, why, my sweetest dove,1 Thus your humid pinions move, Shedding through the air in showers Essence of the balmiest flowers? Tell me whither, whence you rove, Tell me all, my sweetest dove. Curious stranger, I belong To the bard of Teian song; With his mandate now I fly To the nymph of azure eye;— She, whose eye has madden'd many,' But the poet more than any. 1 Gades' warm, desiring train ;] The Gaditanian girls were like the Baladières of Indis whose dances are thus described by & French author; "Les danses sont presque toutes des pantomimes d'amour; le plan, le dessein, les attitudes, les mesures, les sons et les cadences de ces ballets, tout respire cette passion et en exprime les voluptés et les fureurs."-Histoire da Commerce des Europ. dans les deux Indes. Raynal. The music of the Gaditanian females had all the volup tous character of their dancing, as appears from Martial :Cantica qui Nili, qui Gaditana susurrat. Lib. iii. epig. 63. Lodovico Ariosto had this ode of our bard in his mind, when he wrote his poem "De diversis amoribus." See the Anthologia Italorum. The dove of Anacreon, bearing a letter from the poet to his mistress, is met by a stranger, with whom this dialogue is imagined. The ancients made use of letter-carrying pigeons, when they went any distance from home, as the most certain means of conveying intelligence back. That tender domestic attachment, which attracts this delicate little bird through every danger and difficulty, till it settles in its native nest, affords to the author of "The Pleasures of Memory" a fine and interesting exemplification of his subject. Led by what chart, transports the timid dove Venus, for a hymn of love, I shall serve him till I die. Far from rugged haunts like these. From Anacreon's hand I eat Food delicious, viands sweet; Flutter o'er his goblet's brim, Sip the foamy wine with him. This is all-away-awayYou have made me waste the day. How I've chatter'd! prating crow Never yet did chatter so. See the poem. Daniel Heinsins, in speaking of Dousa, who adopted this method at the siege of Leyden, expresses a similar sentiment. Quo patriæ non tendit amor? Mandata referre Postquam hominem nequiit mittere, misit avem. Fuller tells us, that at the siege of Jerusalem, the Christians intercepted a letter, tied to the legs of a dove, in which the Persian Emperor promised assistance to the besieged.— Holy War, cap. 24, book i. 3 She, whose eye has madden'd many, &c.] For rupavvov, in the original, Zeune and Schneider conjecture that we should read Tupavvov, in allusion to the strong influence which this object of his love held over the mind of Polycrates. See Degen. 4 Venus, for a hymn of love, Warbled in her votive grove, &c.] "This passage is invaluable, and I do not think that any thing so beautiful or so delicate has ever been said. What an idea does it give of the poetry of the man, from whom Venus herself, the mother of the Graces and the Pleasures, purchases a little hymn with one of her favorite doves!" Longepierre. De Pauw objects to the authenticity of this ode, because it makes Anacreon his own panegyrist; but poets have a license for praising themselves, which, with some indeed, may be considered as comprised under their general privilege of fiction. ODE XVI.1 THOU, whose soft and rosy hues But I've thy beauties all by heart. A sigh of perfume on the gale. 1 This ode and the next may be called companion-pictures; they are highly finished, and give us an excellent idea of the taste of the ancients in beauty. Franciscus Junius quotes them in his third book "De Pictura Veterum." This ode has been imitated by Ronsard, Giuliano Goselini, &c. &c. Scaliger alludes to it thus in his Anacreontica: Olim lepore blando, Litis versibus Quam pingeret amicus Descripsit Venerem suam. The Teian bard of former days, And taught the painter's hand to trace In the dialogue of Caspar Barlæus, entitled "An formosa sit ducenda," the reader will find many curious ideas and descriptions of womanly beauty. 2 Thou, whose soft and rosy hues, Mimic form and soul infuse,] I have followed here the reading of the Vatican MS. podens. Painting is called "the rosy art," either in reference to coloring, or as an indefinite epithet of excellence, from the association of beauty with that flower. Salvini has adopted this reading in his literal translation: Della rosea arte signore. The lovely maid that's far away.] If this portrait of the poet's mistress be not merely ideal, the omission of her name is much to be regretted. Meleager, in an epigram on Anacreon, mentions "the golden Eurypyle" as his mistress. Βεβληκως χρυσέην χειρας επ' Ευρυπυλην, 4 Paint her jetty ringlets playing, Silky locks like tendrils straying;] The ancients have been very enthusiastic in their praises of the beauty of hair. Apuleius, in the second book of his Milesiacs, says, that Venus herself, if she were bald, though surrounded by the Graces and the Loves, could not be pleasing even to her husband Vulcan. Let her eyebrows smoothly rise In jetty arches o'er her eyes, Each, a crescent gently gliding, Just commingling, just dividing. But, hast thou any sparkles warn The lightning of her eyes to form? Let them effuse the azure rays That in Minerva's glances blaze, Mix'd with the liquid light that lies In Cytherea's languid eyes. O'er her nose and cheek be shed Flushing white and soften'd red; Mingling tints, as when there glows In snowy milk the bashful rose." Then her lip, so rich in blisses, Sweet petitioner for kisses, Rosy nest, where lurks Persuasion, Mutely courting Love's invasion. "Nor wi the ancients to the goddess Isis, he says, but that Anacreon, (a man very judicious in the motives of wanton love,) intending to bestow on mistress that one of the titles of woman's special well-haired, (kadλınλokaμos,) thought of this wh his painter direction to make her black-haired." And, if painting hath the skill To make the spicy balm distil, &c.] Thus P speaking of a picture : επαίνω και τον ενδρυσαν τ και φημι γεγράφθαι αυτά μετα της οσμής. “I a dewiness of these roses, and could say that their was painted." Mir'd with the liquid light that lies In Cytherea's languid eyes.] Marchetti explain ύγρον of the original: Dipingili umidetti Tremuli e lascivetti, Quai gli ha Ciprigna l'alma Dea d'Amor Tasso has painted in the same manner the eyes of Qual raggio in onda le scintilla un riso Negli umidi occhi tremulo e lascivo. Within her humid, melting eyes A brilliant ray of laughter lies, Soft as the broken solar beam, That trembles in the azure stream. The mingled expression of dignity and tendern Anacreon requires the painter to infuse into the e mistress, is more amply described in the subse Both descriptions are so exquisitely touched, that must have been great indeed, if he did not yield to the poet. 7 Mingling tints, as when there glows In snowy milk the bashful rose.] Thus Properti lib. ii. Utque rosa puro lacte natant folia. And Davenant, in a little poem called "The Mist Catch as it falls the Scythian snow, Bring blushing roses steep'd in milk. Stesichorus gave the epithet kaλdinλoxapos to the Graces, Thus too Taygetus:and Simonides bestowed the same upon the Muses. See Hadrian Junius's Dissertation upon Hair. To this passage of our poet, Seldon alluded in a note on the Polyolbion of Drayton, Song the Second, where observing, that the epithet "black-haired" was given by some of Quæ lac atque rosas vincis candore rul These last words may perhaps defend the "flushi of the translation. 8 Then her lip, so rich in blisses, Sweet petitioner for kisses,] The "lip, provokin |