The dulcet shell to beauty sings,

And love dissolves along the strings!
Thus, when my heart is sweetly taught
How little gold deserves a thought,
The winged slave returns once more,
And with him wafts delicious store
Of racy wine, whose balmy art
In slumber seals the anxious heart!
Again he tries my soul to sever

From love and song, perhaps for ever!
Away, deceiver! why pursuing
Ceaseless thus my heart's undoing?
Sweet is the song of amorous fire;
Sweet are the sighs that thrill the lyre ;
Oh! sweeter far than all the gold
The waftage of thy wings can hold.
I well remember all thy wiles;
They wither'd Cupid's flowery smiles,
And o'er his harp such garbage shed,
I thought its angel breath was fled!
They tainted all his bowl of blisses,
His bland desires and hallow'd kisses.

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 ;
Thy glitter in the Muse's shade ·

Scares from her bower the tuneful maid;
And not for worlds would I forego
That moment of poetic glow,

When my full soul, in Fancy's stream,
Pours o'er the lyre its swelling theme.
Away, away! to worldlings hence,
Who feel not this diviner sense,
And with thy gay, fallacious blaze,
Dazzle their unrefined gaze.

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,
Now the fiery clusters teem,
In osier baskets, borne along
By all the festal vintage throng
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Ripe as the melting fruits they bear.
Now, now they press the pregnant grapes,
And now the captive stream escapes,
In fervid tide of nectar gushing,
And for its bondage proudly blushing!
While, round the vat's impurpled brim,
The choral song, the vintage hymn
Of rosy youths and virgins fair,
Steals on the cloy'd and panting air.

* 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 orient tide that sparkling flies ;

The infant balm of all their fears,

The infant Bacchus, born in tears!
When he, whose verging years decline
As deep into the vale as mine,
When he inhales the vintage-spring,
His heart is fire, his foot's a wing;
And as he flies, his hoary hair

Plays truant with the wanton air!
While the warm youth, whose wishing soul
Has kindled o'er th' inspiring bowl,
Impassion❜d seeks the shadowy grove,
Where, in the tempting guise of love,
Reclining sleeps some witching maid,

Whose sunny charms, but half display'd,
Blush through the bower, that, closely twined,
Excludes the kisses of the wind!

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,
And love was nature's holiest fire!
The virgin weeps, the virgin sighs;
He kiss'd her lips, he kiss'd her eyes;
The sigh was balm, the tear was dew,
They only raised his flame anew.
And, oh! he stole the sweetest flower
That ever bloom'd in any bower!

Such is the madness wine imparts,
Whene'er it steals on youthful hearts.

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."