The dulcet shell to beauty sings, And love dissolves along the strings! From love and song, perhaps for ever! They tainted all his bowl of blisses, His bland desires and hallow'd kisses.] Original : Oh! fly to haunts of sordid men, But rove not near the bard again ; Scares from her bower the tuneful maid; When my full soul, in Fancy's stream, Φιλημάτων δε κεδίων, Ποθων κυπελλα κίρνης. Horace has "Desiderîque temperare poculum," not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importing the lovephiltres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favourite 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 Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea, “ Ίνα και πίνης αμα και φίλης," ""that you may at once both drink and kiss." ODE LIX.* SABLED by the solar beam, * The title Επιληνιος ύμνος, 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 scepticism, 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 satisfactory criticism. Mark, how they drink, with all their eyes, The infant balm of all their fears, The infant Bacchus, born in tears! Plays truant with the wanton air! Whose sunny charms, but half display'd, The virgin wakes, the glowing boy Allures her to th' embrace of joy; Swears that the herbage Heaven had spread, Was sacred as the nuptial bed; Swears that the herbage Heaven had spread, Was sacred as the nuptial bed; etc.] The original here That laws should never bind desire, Such is the madness wine imparts, has been variously interpreted. Some, in their zeal for our author's purity, have supposed that the youth only persuades her to a premature marriage. Others understand from the words προδοσιν γαμων γενεσθαι, that he seduces her to a violation of the nuptial vow. The turn which I have given it is somewhat like the sentiment of Heloïsa, "amorem conjugio, libertatem vinculo præferre." (See her original Letters.) The Italian translations have almost all wantoned upon this description; but that of Marchetti is indeed “nimium lubricus aspici." |