Oh, there is nought in nature bright,
Where roses do not shed their light!
When morning paints the orient skies,
Her fingers burn with roseate dyes;
The nymphs display the rose's charms,
It mantles o'er their graceful arms;
Through 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:

When morning paints the orient skies,

Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; etc.] In the original here, he enumerates the many epithets of beauty, borrowed from roses, which were used by the poets, wapα vwv σoQwv. 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; etc.] 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 Statius, Theb. lib. x. 782.

-hi sertis, hi veris honore soluto Accumulant artus patriâque in sede reponunt Corpus odoratum.

And when, at length, in pale decline,

Its florid beauties fade and pine,

Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath
Diffuses odour e'en in death!

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

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 μɛλŋμa. 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 he has adduced some sepulchral inscriptions to this purpose.

And mocks the vestige of decay.] When he says that this flower prevails over time itself, he still alludes to its efficacy in embalment (tenerâ poneret ossa rosâ. 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; χρονον δε ετε Έρως, ετε ροδα οἶδεν. Unfortunately the similitude lies not in their duration, but their transience.

Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath

Diffuses odour e'en in death!] Thus Caspar Barlæus, in his Ritus Nuptiarum:

Ambrosium late rosa tunc quoque spargit odorem,
Cum fluit, aut multo languida sole jacet.

Nor then the rose its odour loses,
When all its flushing beauties die;

Nor less ambrosial balm diffuses,

When wither'd by the solar eye!

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, with blushing tinctures 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,

With nectar drops, a ruby tide,

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

rosæ

Fuse aprino de cruore

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

And bade them bloom, the flowers divine
Of him who sheds the teeming 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,

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 enamour'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!

*"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

vol, as our poet himself terms them in the fifty-ninth ode. We cannot help feeling a peculiar veneration for these relics of the religion of antiquity. Horace may be supposed to have written the nineteenth ode of his second book, and the twenty-fifth 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 glance
In winged circlets through the dance!
Bacchus, the god, again is here,
And leads along the blushing year;
The blushing year with rapture teems,
Ready to shed those cordial streams,
Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,
Illuminate the sons of earth!

And when the ripe and vermil wine,
Sweet infant of the pregnant vine,
Which now in mellow clusters swells,
Oh! when it bursts its rosy cells,
The heavenly stream shall mantling flow,
To balsam every mortal woe!

Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth,

Illuminate the sons of earth!] In the original worov ασονον 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, with very elegant gallantry, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See De Meré, quoted by Bayle, art. Helène.