That much I fear, the midnight shower As thou shalt own with all thy heart!" ODE XXXIV.1 Oн thou, of all creation blest, ! In a Latin ode addressed to the grasshopper, Rapin has preserved some of the thoughts of our author : O quæ virenti graminis in toro, Cicada, blande sidis, et herbidos Seu forte adultis floribus incubas, Oh thou, that on the grassy bed Which Nature's vernal hand has spread, Or, &c. See what Licetus says about grasshoppers, cap. 93. and 185. 2 Awicking thy song with such a glee, &c.] "Some authors have affirmed (says Madame Dacier), that it is only male grasshoppers which sing, and that the females are silent; and on this circumstance is founded a bon-mot of Xenarchus, the comic poet, who κατε, από σωσιν οἱ ταττιγες ουκ ευδαίμονες ἐν ταῖς γυναιξιν ουδ' ότι συν $wong van ; ' are not the grasshoppers happy in having dumb wives?'" Tas note is originally Henry Stephen's; but I chose rather to make a lady my authority for it. ↑ The Mars love thy shrilly tone; &c.] Phile, de Animal. Proprietat, calls this insect Mover ios, the darling of the Muses; and , the bird of the Muses; and we find Plato compared for his eloquence to the grasshopper, in the following punning lines of Timon, preserved by Diogenes Laertius : Των πάντων δ' ηγείτο πλατύστατος, αλλ' αγορητής This last line is borrowed from Homer's Iliad, y, where there ores the very same simile. 4 Matrious insect, chiid of earth,] Longepierre has quoted the two first lines of an epigram of Antipater, from the first book of the Anthologia, where he prefers the grasshopper to the swan : For thou art mild as matin dew; Unworn by age's dim decline, The fadeless blooms of youth are thine. Melodious insect, child of earth,* In wisdom mirthful, wise in mirth; Exempt from every weak decay, That withers vulgar frames away; With not a drop of blood to stain The current of thy purer vein; So blest an age is pass'd by thee, Thou seem'st a little deity! ODE XXXV.5 CUPID once upon a bed Αρκει τέττιγας μεθύσαι δροσος, αλλά πιοντες In dew, that drops from morning's wings, 5 Theocritus has imitated this beautiful ode in his nineteenth idyl but is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and naïveté of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, has sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I allude, begins thus: Upon a day, as Love lay sweetly slumbering All in his mother's lap ; A gentle bee, with his loud trumpet murmuring, In Almeloveen's collection of epigrams, there is one by Luxorius, correspondent somewhat with the turn of Anacreon, where Love complains to his mother of being wounded by a rose. The ode before us is the very flower of simplicity. The infantine complainings of the little god, and the natural and impressive reflections which they draw from Venus, are beauties of inimitable grace. I may be pardoned, perhaps, for introducing here another of Menage's Anacreontics, not for its similitude to the subject of this ode, but for some faint traces of the same natural simplicity, which it appears to me to have preserved : Έρως ποτ' εν χορείαις Luckless urchin, not to see Thus he spoke, and she the while I might, by bribes, my doom delay, ODE XXXVI. Ir hoarded gold possess'd the power That when Death came, with shadowy pinion, Έρως ερυθριάζει Εγω, δε οἱ παραστάς, As dancing o'er the enamell'd plain, And round her neck his arms he threw ; Fontenelle has translated this ode, in his dialogue between Anacreon and Aristotle in the shades, where, on weighing the merits of both these personages, he bestows the prize of wisdom upon the poet. "The German imitators of this ode are, Lessing, in his poem Gestern Brüder,' &c.; Gleim, in the ode An den Tod;' and Schimdtin der Poet. Blumenl., Gotting. 1783, p. 7."-Degen. ODE XXXVILA "Twas night, and many a circling bowl Some ruddy striplings who look'd onWith cheeks, that like the wine-god's shone, 2 That when Death came, with shadowy pinion, To waft me to his bleak dominion, &c.] The commentators, who are so fond of disputing " de lana caprina," have been very busy on the authority of the phrase iv' av barew emekb. The reading of a av Ðavaroç eæen, which De Medenbach proposes in his Amornitates Literariæ, was already hinted by Le Fevre, who seldom suggests anything worth notice. 3 The goblet rich, the board of friends, Whose social souls the goblet blends;] This communion of friendship, which sweetened the bowl of Anacreon, has not been for gotten by the author of the following scholium, where the blessings of life are enumerated with proverbial simplicity. Yau s άριστον ανδρι θνητῳ. Δευτέρου δε, καλον στην γενεσθαι Тортов πλουτείν αδόλως. Και το τέταρτον συνέθαι μετα των φίλων. Of mortal blessings here the first is health, And next those charms by which the eye we move; 4 "Compare with this ode the beautiful poem 'der Traum' of Uz."-Degen. Le Fevre, in a note upon this ode, enters into an elaborate and learned justification of drunkenness; and this is probably the cause of the severe reprehension which he appears to have suffered for his Anacreon. "Fuit olim fateor (says he in a note upon Lengi nus), cum Sapphonem amabam. Sed ex quo illa me perditissima fœmina pene miserum perdidit cum sceleratissimo suo congerrone, (Anacreontem dico, si nescis, Lector,) noli sperare," &c. &c. He adduces on this ode the authority of Plato, who allowed ebriety, st the Dionysian festivals, to men arrived at their fortieth year. He likewise quotes the following line from Alexis, which he says no one, who is not totally ignorant of the world, can hesitate to confess the truth of: Ουδείς φιλοποτης στην ανθρωπος κακός, "No lover of drinking was ever a vicious man." Saw me chasing, free and wild, Though none could doubt they envied me. A kiss that Jove himself might sip- "Again, sweet sleep, that scene restore, ODE XXXVIII.3 LET us drain the nectar'd bowl, To him, the god who loves so well Behold!-my boys a goblet bear, 1 When sudden all my dream of joys, Blushing nymphs and laughing boys, 42 were gone!] "Nonnus says of Bacchus, almost in the same words that Anacreon uses, Εγρόμενος δε Παρθενον ουκ εκίχησε, και ηθελεν αυθις ιαύειν." Waking, he lost the phantom's charms, 2" Again, sweet sleep, that scene restore, LONGEPIERRE. Oh let me dream it o'er and o'er!"] Doctor Johnson, in his Preface to Shakspeare, animadverting upon the commentators of that poet, who pretended, in every little coincidence of thought, to detect an imitation of some ancient poet, alludes in the following weds to the line of Anacreon before us :-"I have been told that When Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, 'I cried to sleep again,' the author imitates Anacreon, who had, like any other man, the same wish on the same occasion." Compare with this beautiful ode to Bacchus the verses of Hagedorn, lib. v. das Gesellschaftliche;' and of Burger, p. 51, &c. bc."-- Degen. Him, that the money Queen of Charms So oft has fondled in her arms.] Robertellus, upon the epithaarhum of Catullus, mentions an ingenious derivation of Cytherea, the name of Venus, Tapa To KENDRIY TOUS EParas, which seems to hint that Love's fairy favours are lost, when not concealed." 8 Ραιος ὁ χαιροντων εστί βιος, είτα τα λοιπά Of which the following is a paraphrase :- 6 Snows may o'er his head be flung, But his heart-his heart is young.] Saint Pavin makes the same distinction in a sonnet to a young girl. Je sais bien que les destinées Ont mal compassé nos années; ODE XL. I KNOW that Heaven hath sent me here ODE XLI. WHEN Spring adorns the dewy scene, And with some maid, who breathes but love, Ne regardez que mon amour; When first I set my eyes on thee ! 3 Never can heart that feels with me Descend to be a slave to thee!] Longepierre quotes here an epigram from the Anthologia, on account of the similarity of a particular phrase. Though by no means Anacreontic, it is marked by an interesting simplicity which has induced me to paraphrase it, and may atone for its intrusion. Ελπις και συ τύχη μέγα χαιρετε. τον λιμεν' εύρον. Ουδεν έμοι χ' ύμων, παίζετε τους μετ' εμε. At length to Fortune, and to you, The charm that once beguil'd is o'er, 2 Bacchus shall bid my winter bloom, And Venus dance me to the tomb!] The same commentator has quoted an epitaph, written upon our poet by Julian, in which he makes him promulgate the precepts of good fellowship even from the tomb. Or sit in some cool, green recess― Oh, is not this true happiness? ODE XLII. YES, be the glorious revel mine, And does there then remain but this, Of her, who breath'd the soul of bliss, 4 The character of Anacreon is here very strikingly depicted. His love of social, harmonised pleasures, is expressed with a warmth, amiable and endearing. Among the epizrams imputed to Anacreon is the following; it is the only one worth translation, and it breathes the same sentiments with this ode: Ου φίλος, ός κρητήρι παρα πλέω οινοποτάζων, Αλλ' όστις Μουσεων τε, και αγλαα δωρ' Αφροδίτης When to the lip the brimming cup is prest, ODE XLIII. WHILE our rosy fillets shed Freshness o'er each fervid head, A youth the while, with loosen'd hair, Sings, to the wild harp's tender tone, ODE XLIV.5 BUDS of roses, virgin flowers, 6 Of dimpled Spring, the wood-nymph wild. And while the harp, impassion'd, flings Tful raptures from its strings, &c.] Respecting the barbiton a host of authorities may be collected, which, after all, leave us igrant of the nature of the instrument. There is scarcely any point upon which we are so totally uninformed as the music of the atients. The authors extant upon the subject are, I imagine, little understood; and certainly if one of their moods was a proCression by quarter-tones, which we are told was the nature of the eharmonic scale, simplicity was by no means the characteristic of their melody; for this is a nicety of progression, of which modern music is not susceptible. The invention of the barbiton is, by Athenæus, attributed to Anacreon. See his fourth book, where it is called rо ebpηua Tou A. Neanthes of Cyzicus, as quoted by Gyraldus, asserts the same. Vide Chabot, in Horat. on the words "Lesboum barbiton," in the first ode. 2 And oh, the sadness in his sigh, At o'er his lip the accents die!] Longepierre has quoted here an epigram from the Anthologia : Κούρη τις μ' εφίλησε ποθέσπερα χείλεσιν ύγρους. Of which the following paraphrase may give some idea : The kiss that she left on my lip, Like a dew-drop shall lingering lie; "Twas nectar she gave me to sip. "Twas nectar I drank in her sigh. • Collected by Meibomius. ODE XLV. WITHIN this goblet, rich and deep, I cradle all my woes to sleep. From the moment she printed that kiss, Nor reason, nor rest has been mine; 3 It seems as Love himself had come To make this spot his chosen home;-] The introduction of these deities to the festival is merely allegorical. Madame Dacier thinks that the poet describes a masquerade, where these deities were personated by the company in masks. The translation will conform with either idea. 4 All, all are here, to hail with me The Genius of Festivity!] Kapos, the deity or genius of mirth. Philostratus, in the third of his pictures, gives a very lively description of this god. 5 This spirited poem is a 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 Tatius, to which Barnes refers us, the rose is fancifully styled "the eye of flowers ;" and the same poetess, in another fragment, calls the favours of the Muse "the roses of Pieria." See the notes on the fifty-fifth ode. "Compare with this ode (says the German annotator) the beautiful ode of Uz, die Rose.'" 6 When with the blushing, sister Graces, The wanton winding dance he traces.] "This sweet idea of Love dancing with the Graces, is almost peculiar to Anacreon."— Degen. ↑ I lead some bright nymph through the dance, &c.] The epithet Babumos, which he gives to the nymph, is literally "full-bosomed." |