The moon, too, quaffs her paly stream
Of lustre, from the solar beam.

Then, hence with all your sober thinking!
Since Nature's holy law is drinking;

I'll make the laws of Nature mine,
And pledge the universe in wine!

ODE XXII.*

THE Phrygian rock, that braves the storm,
Was once a weeping matron's form;

* Ogilvie, in his Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients, in remarking upon the Odes of Anacreon, says, “In some of his pieces there is exuberance and even wildness of imagination; in that particularly, which is addressed to a young girl, where he wishes alternately to be transformed to a mirror, a coat, a stream, a bracelet, and a pair of shoes, for the different purposes which he recites; this is mere sport and wan

tonness."

It is the wantonness however of a very graceful Muse; ludit amabiliter. The compliment of this ode is exquisitely delicate, and so singular for the period in which Anacreon lived, when the scale of love had not yet been graduated into all its little progressive refinements, that if we were inclined to question the authenticity of the poem, we should find a much more plausible argument in the features of modern gallantry which it bears, than in any of those fastidious conjectures upon which some commentators have presumed so far. Degen thinks it spurious, and De Pauw pronounces it to

And Progne, hapless, frantic maid,

Is now a swallow in the shade.

be miserable. Longepierre and Barnes refer us to several imitations of this ode, from which I shall only select an epigram of Dionysius:

Ειθ' ανεμος γενομην, συ δε γε τείχεσα παρ' αυγας,
Στεθεα γυμνωσαις, και με πνεοντα λαβοις.
Ειθε ςοδον γενομην ὑποπορφυρον, οφρα με χερσιν
Αραμένη, κομισαις τεθεσι χιονεοις.

Είθε κρινον γενομην λευκοχροον, οφρα με χερσιν
Αραμένη, μαλλον της χρονιας κορέσης.

I wish I could like zephyr steal
To wanton o'er thy mazy vest;
And thou wouldst ope thy bosom veil,
And take me panting to thy breast!

I wish I might a rose-bud grow,

And thou wouldst cull me from the bower,
And place me on that breast of snow,
Where I should bloom, a wintry flower !

I wish I were the lily's leaf,

To fade upon that bosom warm;
There I should wither, pale and brief,

The trophy of thy fairer form!

Allow me to add, that Plato has expressed as fanciful a wish in a distich preserved by Laertius:

Ασερας εισαθρείς, αςης εμος. είθε γενοίμην
Ουρανος, ὡς πολλοις όμμασιν εις σε βλεπω.

TO STELLA.

Why dost thou gaze upon the sky?

Oh! that I were that spangled sphere,

And every star should be an eye,
To wonder on thy beauties here!

Oh! that a mirror's form were mine,
To sparkle with that smile divine;
And, like my heart, I then should be
Reflecting thee, and only thee!

Or were I, love, the robe which flows
O'er every charm that secret glows,
In many a lucid fold to swim,
And cling and grow to every limb!
Oh! could I, as the streamlet's wave,
Thy warmly-mellowing beauties lave,
Or float as perfume on thine hair,
And breathe my soul in fragrance there!
I wish I were the zone that lies

Warm to thy breast, and feels its sighs!

Apuleius quotes this epigram of the divine philosopher, to justify himself for his verses on Critias and Charinus. See his Apology, where he also adduces the example of Anacreon; "Fecere tamen et alii talia, et si vos ignoratis, apud Græcos Teius quidam," etc. etc.

I wish I were the zone, that lies

Warm to thy breast, and feels its sighs!] This ravin was a riband, or band, called by the Romans fascia and strophium, which the women wore for the purpose of restraining the exuberance of the bosom. Vide Polluc. Onomast. Thus Martial:

Fasciâ crescentes dominæ compesce papillas.

The women of Greece not only wore this zone, but condemned themselves to fasting, and made use of certain drugs

Or like those envious pearls that show
So faintly round that neck of snow;
Yes, I would be a happy gem,

Like them to hang, to fade like them.
What more would thy Anacreon be?
Oh! any thing that touches thee.
Nay, sandals for those airy feet-

Thus to be press'd by thee were sweet!

and powders for the same purpose. To these expedients they were compelled, in consequence of their inelegant fashion of compressing the waist into a very narrow compass, which necessarily caused an excessive tumidity in the bosom. See Dioscorides, lib. v.

Nay, sandals for those airy feet—

Thus to be press'd by thee were sweet!] The sophist Philostratus, in one of his love-letters, has borrowed this thought; ω άδετοι ποδες. ω καλλος ελευθερος. ω τρισευδαι

μων εγω και μακαριος εαν πατησετε με. c Oh lovely

feet! oh excellent beauty! oh! thrice happy and blessed should I be, if you would but tread on me!" In Shakespeare, Romeo desires to be a glove:

Oh! that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might kiss that cheek!

And, in his Passionate Pilgrim, we meet with an idea somewhat like that of the thirteenth line :

He, spying her, bounced in, where as he stood,
"O Jove!" quoth she, " why was not I a flood?"

In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, that whimsical farrago of "all such reading as was never read," there is a very old translation of this ode, before 1632. Englished by Mr. B. Holiday, in his Technog. act 1, scene 7.”

66

ODE XXIII.*

I OFTEN wish this languid lyre,

This warbler of my soul's desire,

Could raise the breath of song sublime,
To men of fame, in former time.
But when the soaring theme I try,
Along the chords my numbers die,
And whisper, with dissolving tone,
"Our sighs are given to Love alone!"
Indignant at the feeble lay,

I tore the panting chords away,
Attuned them to a nobler swell,

And struck again the breathing shell;

This ode is first in the series of all the editions, and is thought to be peculiarly designed as an introduction to the rest; it however characterizes the genius of the Teian but very inadequately, as wine, the burden of his lays, is not even mentioned in it.

-cum multo Venerem confundere mero Precepit Lyrici Teia Musa senis.

Ovid.

The twenty-sixth Ode, av μɛv λeyɛis ra Onens, might, with as much propriety, be the harbinger of his songs.

Bion has expressed the sentiments of the ode before us with much simplicity in his fourth idyl. I have given it rather paraphrastically; it has been so frequently translated, that I could not otherwise avoid triteness and repetition.