ODE VI.*

As late I sought the spangled bowers,
To cull a wreath of matin flowers,
Where many an early rose was weeping,
I found the urchin Cupid sleeping.

suredly the sense of the text, and it cannot admit of any other."

The Italian translators, to save themselves the trouble of a note, have taken the liberty of making Anacreon explain this fable. Thus Salvini, the most literal of any of them:

Ma con lor non giuochi Apollo;

Che in fiero risco

Col duro disco

A Giacinto fiaccò il collo.

* The Vatican MS. pronounces this beautiful fiction to be the genuine offspring of Anacreon. It has all the features of the parent:

et facile insciis Noscitetur ab omnibus.

The commentators, however, have attributed it to Julian, a royal poet.

Where many an early rose was weeping,

I found the urchin Cupid sleeping.] This idea is prettily imitated in the following epigram by Andreas Naugerius :

Florentes dum forte vagans mea Hyella per hortos
Texit odoratis lilia cana rosis,

Ecce rosas inter latitantem invenit amorem
Et simul annexis floribus implicuit.

I caught the boy, a goblet's tide
Was richly mantling by my side,
I caught him by his downy wing,
And whelm'd him in the racy spring.

Luctatur primo, et contra nitentibus alis
Indomitus tentat solvere vincta puer,
Mox ubi lacteolas et dignas matre papillas
Vidit et ora ipsos nata movere Deos.
Impositosque comæ ambrosios ut sentit odores
Quosque legit diti messe beatus Arabs;

66

"I (dixit) mea, quære novum tibi mater amorem,
"Imperio sedes hæc erit apta meo."

As fair Hyella, through the bloomy grove,
A wreath of many mingled flow'rets wove,
Within a rose a sleeping love she found,
And in the twisted wreaths the baby bound,
Awhile he struggled, and impatient tried
To break the rosy bonds the virgin tied;
But when he saw her bosom's milky swell,
Her features, where the eye of Jove might dwell;
And caught the ambrosial odours of her hair,
Rich as the breathings of Arabian air;
"Oh! mother Venus" (said the raptured child
By charms, of more than mortal bloom, beguiled),
"Go, seek another boy, thou'st lost thine own,

This epigram of Naugerius is imitated by Lodovico Dolce, in a poem beginning

Mentre raccoglie hor uno, hor altro fiore
Vicina a un rio di chiare et lucid' onde,
Lidia, etc. etc.

Oh! then I drank the poison'd bowl,
And Love now nestles in my soul!
Yes, yes, my soul is Cupid's nest,
I feel him fluttering in my breast.

ODE VII.*

THE Women tell me every day That all my bloom has past away. "Behold," the pretty wantons cry, "Behold this mirror with a sigh; "The locks upon thy brow are few, "And, like the rest, they're withering too!" Whether decline has thinn'd my hair,

I'm sure I neither know nor care;

* Alberti has imitated this ode, in a poem beginning Nisa mi dice e Clori

Tirsi, tu se' pur veglio.

Whether decline has thinn'd my hair,

I'm sure I neither know nor care.

e.] Henry Stephen very

justly remarks the elegant negligence of expression in the

original here :

Εγω δε τας κομας μεν

Ειτ' εισιν, ειτ' απηλθον
Ουκ οίδα.

But this I know, and this I feel,
As onward to the tomb I steal,
That still as death approaches nearer,
The joys of life are sweeter, dearer;
And had I but an hour to live,

That little hour to bliss I'd give !

And Longepierre has adduced from Catullus, what he thinks a similar instance of this simplicity of manner :

Ipse quis sit, utrum sit, an non sit, id quoque hescit.

Longepierre was a good critic, but perhaps the line which he has selected is a specimen of a carelessness not very clegant; at the same time I confess, that none of the Latin poets have ever appeared to me so capable of imitating the graces of Anacreon as Catullus, if he had not allowed a depraved imagination to hurry him so often into vulgar licentiousness.

That still as death approaches nearer,

The joys of life are sweeter, dearer;] Pontanus has a very delicate thought upon the subject of old age :

Quid rides, Matrona? senem quid temnis amantem?
Quisquis amat nullâ est conditione senex.

Why do you scorn my want of youth,
And with a smile my brow behold?

Lady, dear! believe this truth,

That he who loves cannot be old.

VOL. VII.

3

ODE VIII.*

I CARE not for the idle state
Of Persia's king, the rich, the great!
I envy not the monarch's throne,
Nor wish the treasured gold my own.
But oh! be mine the rosy braid,
The fervour of my brows to shade
Be mine the odours, richly sighing,
Amidst my hoary tresses flying.

"The German poet Lessing has imitated this ode. Vol. i. p. 24."-Degen. Gail de Editionibus.

Baxter conjectures that this was written upon the occasion of our poet's returning the money to Policrates, according to the anecdote in Stobæus.

I care not for the idle state,

Of Persia's king, etc.] "There is a fragment of Archilocus in Plutarch, 'De tranquillitate animi,' which our poet has very closely imitated here: it begins,

Ου μοι τα Γυγεω το πολυχρυσέ μελει.”—BARNES.

In one of the monkish imitators of Anacreon we find the same thought.

Ψυχήν εμην ερωτω,

Τι σοι θελεις γενεσθαι ;

Θελεις Γύγεω, τα και τα ;

Be mine the odours, richly sighing,

Amidst my hoary tresses flying.] In the original, pvposoi