ODE XLIV. BUDS of roses, virgin flowers, Cull'd from Cupid's balmy bowers, In the bowl of Bacchus steep, Till with crimson drops they weep! Twine the rose, the garland twine, Every leaf distilling wine; Drink and smile, and learn to think Of dimpled Spring, the wood-nymph wild! ODE XLV. WITHIN this goblet, rich and deep, Why should we breathe the sigh of fear, For Death will never heed the sigh, Then let us never vainly stray, In search of thorns, from pleasure's way; Which Bacchus loves, which Bacchus gave; This spirited poem is an eulogy on the rose; and again, in the fifty-fifth ode, we shall find our author rich in the praises of that flower. In a fragment of Sappho, in the romance of Achilles Tatins, to which Barnes refers us, the rose is very elegantly styled the eye of flowers; and the same poetess, in another fragment, calls the favours of the Muse the reses of Pieria, See the notes on the fifty-fifth ode. Compare with this forty-fourth odo (says the German annotator) the beautiful ode of Uz die Rose.. When with the blushing, naked Graces, The wanton winding dance he traces.] This sweet idea of Love dancing with the Graces, is almost peculiar to Anacreon.. Degen. ODE XLVI. SEE, the young, the rosy Spring, And cultured field, and winding stream, ODE XLVII. T is true, my fading years decline, Yet I can quaff the brimming wine The fastidious affectation of some commentators has denounced this ode as spurious. Degen pronounces the four last lines to be the patch-work of some miserable versificator, and Brunck condemns the whole ode. It appears to me to be elegantly graphical; full of delcate expressions and luxuriant imagery. The abruptness of Ids wes apos paverтos is striking and spirited, and has been imitated rather languidly by Horace: Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte The imperative ide is infinitely more impressive, as in Shak speare, But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, There is a simple and poetical description of Spring, in Catullus's beautiful farewell to Bithynia. Carm. 44. Barnes conjectures, in his life of our poet, that this ode was written after he had returned from Athens, to settle in his paternal seat at Teos; there, in a little villa at some distance from the city, which commanded a view of the Egean Sea and the islands, be contemplated the beauties of nature, and enjoyed the folicities of retirement. Vide Barnes, in Anac. vita, xxxv. This supposition, however unauthenticated, forms a pleasant association, which makes the poem more interesting. Monsieur Chevreau says, that Gregory Nazianzenus has paraphrased somewhere this description of Spring. I cannot find it. See Chevreau, OEuvres Mêlées. . Compare with this ode (says Degen) the verses of Hagedorn, book fourth der Frühling, and book fifth der Mai.. While virgin Graces warm with May, Covory, the roses display their graces. This is not uningeniFling roses o'er her dewy way!] De Pauw reads. Xapras jede ous; but we lose by it the beauty of the personification, to the boldness of which Regnier has objected very frivolously. The murmuring billows of the deep Have languish'd into silent sleep, etc.] It has been justly remarked that the liquid few of the line απαλυνεται γαληνη is perfectly expressive of the tranquillity which it describes. And cultured field, and winding stream, etc.] By Sportov Epga, the works of men, (says Baster), he means cites, temples, and towns, which are then illuminated by the beams of the suu. As deep as any stripling fair Whose cheeks the flush of morning wear; Let those who pant for Glory's charms With blushes borrow'd from my wine, ODE XLIX.' WHEN Bacchus, Jove's immortal boy, A flow of joy, a lively heat, ODE XLVIII. WHEN my thirsty soul I steep, But brandishing a rosy flask, etc.] Aoxos was a kind of leathern vessel for wine, very much in use, as should seem by the proverb axos xa Juxanos, which was applied to those who were intemperate in eating and drinking. This proverb is mentioned in some verses quoted by Athenæus, from the Hesione of Alexis. The only thyrsus e'er I'll ask!] Phornutus assigns as a reason for the consecration of the thyrsus to Bacchus, that inebriety often renders the support of a stick very necessary. Try leaves my brow entwining, etc.} The ivy was consecrated t Bacchus (says Montfaucon), because he formerly lay hid under that tree, or, as others will have it, because its leaves resemble those of the vine. Other reasons for its consecration, and the use of it in garlands at banquets, may be found in Longepierre, Barues, etc. etc. Arm you, arm you, men of might, Hasten to the sanguine fight;] I have adopted the interpretation of Reguier and others: Altri segua Marte fero: Che sol Bacco è l mio conforto. ODE L.2 WHEN I drink, I feel, I feel, Warm with the goblet's freshening dews, I think of doubts and fears no more; 1 This, the preceding ode, and a few more of the same character are merely chansons à boire. Most likely they were the effusions ef, the moment of conviviality, and were sung, we imɔgiae, with rapture in Greece; but that interesting associat on, by which they alw recalled the convivial emotions that produced them, can be very litre felt by the most enthusiastic reader, and much less by a phlegmate grammarian, who sees nothing in them but dialects and particles. Who, with the sunshine of the bowl, * Thaws the winter of our soul.] Avalos is the title which he gives to Bacchus in the original. It is a carious circumstance, that Plutarch mistook the name of Levi among the Jews for Atül (one of the bacchanal cries), and accordingly supposed that they worshipped Bacchus. 2 Faber thinks this spurious; but, I believe, he is singular in ha opinion. It has all the spirit of our author. Like the wreath which he presented in the dream, it smells of Anacreon. The form of this ode, in the original, is remarkable. It is a kind of song of seven quatrain stanzas, each beginning with the hae And, while we dance through breathing bowers, That none but social spirits know, When youthful revellers, round the bowl, When youthful revellers, round the bowl, Dilating, mingle soul with soul!] Subjoined to Gail's edition of Anacreon, there are some curious letters upon the Oragon of the ancients, which appeared in the French Journals. At the opening of the Odeon, in Paris, the managers of the spectacle requested Professor Gail to give them some uncommon name for the fêtes of this institution. He suggested the word. Thiase, which was adopted; but the literati of Paris questioned the propriety of it, and addressed their criticisms to Gail, through the medium of the public prints Two or three of the letters he has inserted in his edition, and they have elicited from him some learned research on the subject. Though the wane of age is mine, ODE LII.' AWAY, away, you men of rules, My soul upon the goblet's brim; Though the antiquity of this ode is confirmed by the Vatican manuscript, I am very much inclined to agree in this argument against its authenticity, for, though the dawnings of rhetoric might already have appeared, the first who gave it any celebrity was Corax of Syracuse, and he flourished in the century after Anacreon. Our poet anticipated the ideas of Epicurus, in his aversion to the labours of learning, as well as his devotion to voluptuousness. Пaray wardriar paxaplos peugete, said the philosopher of the garden in a letter to Pythocles. Teach me this, and let me twine 1 Alberti has imitated this ode; and Capilupus, in the following here, I understand some beautiful girl; in the same manner that My arms around the nymph divine ! By Zuous Appodrns epigram, has given a version of it: Avalos is often used for wine. Cur, Lalage, mea vita, meos contemnis amores? Ne fagia, sint sparsa licet mea tempora canis, Ob why repel my soul's impassion'd vow, Golden is frequently an epithet fbeauty. Thus in Virgil, Venus aurea, and in Propertius, « Cynthia aurea.. Tibullus, however, calls an old woman golden.. The translation d'Autori Abonimi, as usual, wantons on this passage of Anacron Em insegni con piu rare Forme accorte d'involare Ad amabile beltade Il bel cinto d' onestade, And there's an end-for ah! you know, They drink but little wine below! ODE LIII. When I behold the festive train And wings ine lightly through the dance. Cull the flower and twine the braid; Burn upon my brow of snows; And let ine, while the wild and young mazy Trip the dance along, Fling my heap of years away, ODE LIV. METHINKS, the pictured bull we see Is amorous Jove-it must be he! And there's an end-for ah! you know, They drink but little wine below!] Thus the witty MainardLa Mort nous guette; et quand ses lois Nous ont enfermés une fois Au sein d'une fosse profonde, Adieu bons vins et bons repas, Ma science ne trouve pas Des cabarets en 1 autre monde. From Mainard, Gombauld, and De Cailly, old French poets, some of the best epigrams of the English language are borrowed. Bid the blush of summer's rose . It woman carried across the sea by a bull. Thus Natalis Comes. lib. viii. cap. 23. . Sidonii numismata cum foemina tauri dorso insidente ac mare transfretante, cuderunt ia ejus honorem.. la the little trea tise upon the goddess of Syria, attributed very falsely to Lucian, there is mention of this coin, and of a temple dedicated by the Sidoniaus to Astarte, whom some, it appears, confounded with Europa. Moschus has written a very beautiful idyl on the story of Europa. No: he descends from climes above, He looks the God, he breathes of Jure.] Thus Moschus: Κρυψε θεον και τρέψε δέμας· και γίνετο ταύρος. The God forgot himself, his heaven, for love, This ode is a brilliant panegyric on the rose. All antiquity (says Barnes) has produced nothing more beautiful.. From the idea of peculiar excellence which the ancients attached t this flower, arose a pretty proverbial expression, used by Aristophanes according to Suidas, poda μ express, You have spoken roses, a phrase somewhat similar to the dire des fleurettes of the French. In the same ides of excellence originated, I doubt not, a very curious application of the word podoy, for which the inquisitive reader may consult Gaulm`nus upon the epithalamum of our poet, where it is intoduced in the romance of Theodorus. Muretus, in one of his cle Jam te igitur rursus teneo, formosula, jam te (Quid trepidas?) teneo; jam, rosa, te teneo. Burn upon my brow of snows, etc.] Licetus, in his Hieroglyphica, quoting two of our poet's odes, where he calls for garlands, remarks,gies, calls his mistress his rose • Constat ig tur floreas coronas poetis et potantibus in symposio convenire, non autem sapientibus et philosophiam affectantibus. appears that wreaths of flowers were adapted for poets and revellers at banquets, but by no means became those who had pretensions to wisdom and philosophy. On this principle, in his 153d chapter, he discovers a refinement in Virgil, describing the garland of the poet Silenas as fallen off; which distinguishes, he thinks, the divine intoxication of Silenus from that of common drunkards, who always wear their crowns while they drink. This, indeed, is the labor inepuarum. Now I again embrace thee, dearest, Eleg. 8. This, like most of the terms of endearment in the modern Latio i poets, is taken from Plautus; they were vulgar and colloquial in ba time, and they are among the elegancies of the modera Latinista. Passeratius alludes to the ode before us, in the beginning of lus poem on the Rose: Carmine digna rosa est; vellem caneretur ut illam Resplendent rose to thee we'll sing.] I have passed over the line συνέταιρες αυξει μέλπην ; ut is corrupt in this original real ing, and has been very Lttle improved by the annotators. I should suppose it to be an interpolation, if it were not for a line which occurs afterwards, φέρε δή φυσιν λέγωμεν. The rose is worm Dione's bliss, etc.] Belleau, in a note upon an old French port, qui ting the original here podioiar o' abufud, translates it, comme les délices et mignardises de Vénus.. Oft has the poet's magic tongue T is sweet to dare the tangled fence, And fill with balm the fainting gale! Oft has the poet's magic tongue If Jove would give the leafy bowers A queen for all their world of flowers, Till, glowing with the wanton's play, When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes, etc.] In the original here, he enumerates the many epithets of beauty, borrowed from roses, which were used by the poets, apa Tav σov. We see that poets were dignified in Greece with the title of sages; even the careless Anacreon, who lived but for love and voluptuousness, was called by Plato the wise Anacreon. Fuit hæc sapientia quondam. Preterves the cold inurned clay, etc.] He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming; and, perhaps (as Barnes thinks), to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector. Homer's Iliad. It may likewise regard the ancient practice of pat ting garlands of roses on the dead, as in Statius, Theb. lib. x. 782. ➖➖➖➖hi sertis, hi veris honore soluto Accumulant astas patriaque in sede reponunt Where veris honor, though it mean every kind of flowers, may And when, at length, in pale decline, Its florid beauties fade and pine, Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Diffuses odour e'en in death! Oh! whence could such a plant have sprung? When, humid, from the silvery stream, The gods beheld this brilliant birth, seem more particularly to refer to the rese, which our poet, in another ode, calls tapos pornμa. We read, in the Hieroglyphics of Pierius, lib. Iv. that some of the ancients used to order in their wills, that roses should be annually scattered on their tombs, and be Las adduced some sepulchral inscriptions to this purpuse. And mocks the vestige of decay.] When he says that this flower prevails over time itself, he still alludes to its efficacy in embalment (tenera poneret ossa rosa. Propert. lib. i. eleg. 17), or perhaps to the subsequent idea of its fragrance surviving its beauty; for he can the rose. scarcely mean to praise for duration the emimium breves fores of Philostratus compares this flower with love, and says, that they both defy the influence of time: χρονον δε οὔτε Έρως, OUTE poda oider. Unfortunately the similitude lies not in their duration, but their transience. Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Diffuses odour e'en in death.] Thus Caspar Barlæus, in his Ritus Nuptiarum: Ambrosium late rosa tunc quoque spargit odorem, Cum fluit, aut multo languida sole jacet. Nor then the rose its odour loses, With nectar drops, a ruby tidé, The sweetly orient buds they dyed, etc.] The author of the Pervigilium Veneris (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the laboured luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adoais Fuse aprino de cruore according to the emendation of Lipsius. In the following epigram this bue is differently accounted for: Illa quidem studiosa suum defendere Adonim, On whom the jealous war-god rashes ; The snowy tow ret feels her blood, and blushes! |