Fling my heap of years away,
And be as wild, as young as they.
Hither haste, some cordial soul!
Give my lips the brimming bowl;
Oh! you will see this hoary sage
Forget his locks, forget his age.
He still can chaunt the festive hymn,
He still can kiss the goblet's brim ;
He still can act the mellow raver,
And play the fool as sweet as ever!

He still can kiss the goblet's brim; etc.] Wine is prescribed by Galen, as an excellent medicine for old men : “Quod frigidos et humoribus expletos calefaciat,” etc.; 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.”

Λογος ες αρχαιος, 8 κακως εχων,

Οινον λεγεσι της γεροντας, ω πατες,
Πειθειν χορεει» 8 θέλοντας.

ODE LIV.*

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!

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

It may perhaps be considered as a description of one of those coins, which the Sidonians struck off in honour of Europa, representing a woman carried across the sea by a bull. Thus Natalis Comes, lib. viii. cap. 23. "Sidonii numismata cum fœminâ 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 Astarte, whom some, it appears, confounded with Europa.

Moschus has written a very beautiful idyl on the story of Europa.

No: he descends from climes above,

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

ODE LV.*

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

Κρυψε θεον και τρεψε δέμας· και γίνετο ταύρος.
The God forgot himself, his heaven, for love,
And a bull's form belied th' almighty Jove.

66

All an

* 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, goda pripnxas, "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 godoy, for which the inquisitive reader may consult Gaulminus upon the epithalamium of our poet, where it is introduced in the romance of Theodorus. Mure'us, 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 embrace thee, dearest,
(Tell me, wanton, why thou fearest ?)
Again my longing arms infold thee,
Again, my rose, again I hold thee.

Eleg. 8.

This, like most of the terms of endearment in the modern Latin poets, is taken from Plautus; they were vulgar and colloquial in his time, and they 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.

Resplendent rose! the flower of flowers,
Whose breath perfumes Olympus' bowers;
Whose Virgin blush, of chasten'd dye,
Enchants so much our mortal eye.
When Pleasure's bloomy season glows,
The Graces love to twine the rose ;
The rose is warm Dione's bliss,
And flushes like Dione's kiss!
Oft has the poet's magic tongue
The rose's fair luxuriance sung;

Resplendent rose! to thee we'll sing. ] I have passed over the line συν εταιρει αυξει μελπην ; it 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: ege In

φυσιν λέγωμεν.

The rose is warm Dione's bliss, etc.] Belleau, in a note upon an old French poet, quoting the original here appodioiwy r'alupa, translates it, "comme les délices et mignardises de Vénus."

Oft has the poet's magic tongue

The rose's fair luxuriance sung; etc.] 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 ηθελεν ὁ Ζευς επιθείναι βασιλέα, το добок αν των ανθεων εβασίλευε. γης εςι κόσμος, φυτών αγλαϊσμα, οφθαλμος ανθεων, λειμωνος ερύθημα, καλλος αςραπτον. Έρωτος πνει, Αφροδίτην προξένει, ευειδεστ φύλλοις κομά, ευκίνητοις πεταλοις τρυφά, το πεταλον το Ζεφύρω γελά.

If Jove would give the leafy bowers
A queen for all their world of flowers,

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, away
The tear that on its blushes lay!
'Tis sweet to hold the infant stems,
Yet dropping with Aurora's gems,
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!

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 flow'rets, glow of lawns,
Bud of beauty nursed by dawns:
Soft the soul of love it breathes,
Cypria's brow with magic wreaths,
And, to the Zephyr's warm caresses,
Diffuses all its verdant tresses,
Till, glowing with the wanton's play,
It blushes a diviner ray!