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429

TRANSLATIONS FROM

OVID.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE following translations were selected from many others done by the author in his youth; for the most part indeed but a sort of exercise, while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his early bent to poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr. Dryden's Fables came out about that time, which occasioned the Translations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in miscellanies by J. Tonson and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the quarto edition of 1717. The Imitations of English Authors, which are added at the end, were done as early, some of them at fourteen or fifteen years old; but having also got into miscellanies, we have put them here together to complete this juvenile volume.—Pope, in vol. iii. of his works published 1736.

SAPPHO TO PHAON.1

TRANSLATED FROM OVID.

SAY, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?

1 Sappho, a famous Greek poetess, was called by the ancients the Tenth Muse. An inconstant lover, called Phaon, occasioned great calamities to this poetical lady. She fell desperately in love with him, and took a voyage to Sicily in pursuit of him, he having withdrawn himself thither on purpose to avoid her. It was in that island she is supposed to have written her hymn to Venus Her hymn was ineffectual in procuring that happiness which she prayed for in it, and Sappho was so transported with the violence of her passion that she determined to get rid of it at any price.

....

There was a promontory in Acarnania called Leucate, on the top of which was a sinall temple sacred to Apollo. In this temple it was

Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
The lute neglected, and the lyric muse;
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,
And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.

I burn, I burn, as when through ripened corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne!
Phaon to Etna's scorching fields retires,

While I consume with more than Etna's fires!
No more my soul a charm in music finds,
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds.
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please,
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
Once the dear objects of my guilty love;
All other loves are lost in only thine,

Ah, youth ungrateful to a flame like mine!

Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise,
Those heavenly looks, and dear deluding eyes?
The harp and bow would you like Phoebus bear,
A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear;
Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,
Not Bacchus' self with Phaon could compare:
Yet Phoebus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame,
One Daphne warmed, and one the Cretan dame,1

usual for despairing lovers to make their vows in secret, and afterwards fling themselves from the top of the precipice into the sea; where they were sometimes taken up alive. . . . those who had taken this leap were observed never to relapse into that passion. Sappho tried the cure and perished in the experiment.-Addison, Spec. No. 223.

The sea has washed away the narrow neck of land which once connected Leucas or Leucate with Greece; it is now an island called St. Mauro, and the ancient promontory of Leucate is "Cape St. Mauro." -See Spec. No. 227 (Addison).

Alcæus, the poet, arrived at the promontory that very evening in order to take the leap on her account, but refrained when he heard that her body could not be found, and is said to have written his 215th ode on the occasion."- Warton; and Addison, Spec. No. 228. It seems fair to add that modern research has proved that Sappho was calumniated. That she never named her lover; and that she was of good character. The great authority, Karl Müller, tells us, "Alcæus testifies that the attractions and loveliness of Sappho did not derogate from her moral worth when he calls her violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho." He explains that she was a Lesbian and had a school for poetry. The Athenians, who secluded their women, as the Orientals do, could not believe in the moral character of a woman who made herself famous, and belied Sappho, as Ovid, following them, did also.

Müller says also that the leap from Leucadia was rather a poetical image than a real event in the life of Sappho, who survived Alcrus. See a delightful account of Sappho in Müller's History of the Litera ture of Modern Greece, vol. i. p. 71.

Ariadne.

Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,
Than ev'n those gods contend in charms with thee.
The muses teach me all their softest lays,

And the wide world resounds with Sappho's praise;
Though great Alcæus' more sublimely sings,
And strikes with bolder rage the sounding strings,
No less renown attends the moving lyre,
Which Venus tunes, and all her loves inspire;
To me what nature has in charms denied,
Is well by wit's more lasting flame supplied.
Though short my stature, yet my name extends
To heav'n itself, and earth's remotest ends.
Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame 2

Inspired young Perseus with a gen'rous flame;
Turtles and doves of diff'ring hues unite,
And glossy jet is paired with shining white.
If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign,
But such as merit, such as equal thine,
By none, alas! by none thou canst be moved,
Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved!
Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ,
Once in her arms you centred all your joy:
No time the dear remembrance can remove,
For oh! how vast a memory has love!
My music, then, you could for ever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear.
You stopped with kisses my enchanting tongue,
And found my kisses sweeter than my song.
In all I pleased, but most in what was best;
And the last joy was dearer than the rest.

Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired,
You still enjoyed, and yet you still desired,
Till all dissolving in the trance we lay,
And in tumultuous raptures died away.
The fair Sicilians now thy soul inflame;
Why was I born, ye gods, a Lesbian dame?
But ah beware, Sicilian nymphs! nor boast
That wand'ring heart which I so lately lost;
Nor be with all those tempting words abused,
Those tempting words were all to Sappho used.

1 Alcæus was a celebrated lyric poet of Mitylene in Lesbos. He flourished about B. C. 600. Only a few fragments of his works remain. 2 Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia. To appease the anger of the Nereids, she was exposed to a sea monster Perseus Blew the monster and married Andromeda.

And you that rule Sicilia's happy plains,
Have pity, Venus, on your poet's pains.
Shall fortune still in one sad tenor run,
And still increase the woes so soon begun?
Inured to sorrow from my tender years,
My parent's ashes drank my early tears:
My brother next, neglecting wealth and fame,
Ignobly burned in a destructive flame:
An infant daughter late my griefs increased,
And all a mother's cares distract my breast.
Alas, what more could fate itself impose,
But thee, the last and greatest of my woes?
No more my robes in waving purple flow,
Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow;
No more my locks in ringlets curled diffuse
The costly sweetness of Arabian dews,
Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind,
That fly disordered with the wanton wind:
For whom should Sappho use such arts as these?
He's gone, whom only she desired to please!
Cupid's light darts my tender bosom move,
Still is there cause for Sappho still to love:
So from my birth the sisters' fixed my doom,
And gave to Venus all my life to come;

Or while my muse in melting notes complains,
My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.
By charms like thine which all my soul have won,
Who might not-ah! who would not be undone?
For those Aurora Cephalus might scorn,

2

And with fresh blushes paint the conscious morn.
For those might Cynthia lengthen Phaon's sleep,
And bid Endymion nightly tend his sheep.
Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies,
But Mars on thee might look with Venus' eyes.
O, scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy!
O, useful time for lovers to employ !
Pride of thy age, and glory of thy race,
Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace!
The vows you never will return, receive;
And take at least the love you will not give.
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears;

1 The Fates.

2 A beautiful hunter, whom the goddess of the morning loved. He killed his wife Procris by mistake.

The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Sure 'twas not much to bid one kind adieu,
(At least to feign was never hard to you)
"Farewell, my Lesbian love," you might have said,
Or coldly thus, "Farewell, oh Lesbian maid!"
No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover's gift your Sappho could confer,
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
But this, "Be mindful of our loves, and live.'
Now by the Nine, those powers adored by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee,
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale I stood,
Grief chilled my breast, and stopped my freezing
blood;

No sigh to rise, no tear had pow'r to flow,
Fixed in a stupid lethargy of woe:

But when its way th' impetuous passion found,
I rend my tresses, and my breast I wound,
I rave, then weep, I curse, and then complain;
Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.
Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame,
Whose first-born infant feeds the fun'ral flame.
My scornful brother with a smile appears,
Insults my woes, and triumphs in my tears;
His hated image ever haunts my eyes,

"And why this grief? thy daughter lives," he cries.
Stung with my love, and furious with despair,
All torn my garments, and my bosom bare,
My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim;
Such inconsistent things are love and shame!
'Tis thou art all my care and my delight,
My daily longing, and my dream by night:
Oh, night more pleasing than the brightest day,
When fancy gives what absence takes away,
And, dressed in all its visionary charms,
Restores my fair deserter to my arms!

Then round your neck in wanton wreaths I twine,
Then you, methinks, as fondly circle mine;
A thousand tender words I hear and speak;
A thousand melting kisses give, and take:

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