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I pray thee,' said the wanton child' (My bosom trembled as he smiled),' 'I pray thee let me try my bow, For through the rain I've wandered so,

'Twas noon of night, when round the That much I fear the ceaseless shower

pole

The sullen Bear is seen to roll;
And mortals, wearied with the day,
Are slumbering all their cares away:
An infant, at that dreary hour,
Came weeping to my silent bower,
And waked me with a piteous prayer,
To save him from the midnight air!
And who art thou,' I waking cry,
That bid'st my blissful visions fly?'
'O gentle sire!' the infant said,
In pity take me to thy shed;
Nor fear deceit a lonely child
I wander o'er the gloomy wild.
Chill drops the rain, and not a ray
Illumes the drear and misty way!'
I hear the baby's tale of woe;
I hear the bitter night-winds blow;
And, sighing for his piteous fate,
I trimmed my lamp, and oped the gate.
'Twas Love! the little wandering
sprite,

His pinion sparkled through the night!
I knew him by his bow and dart;
I knew him by my fluttering heart!
I take him in, and fondly raise
The dying embers' cheering blaze;

Anacreon appears to have been a volup tuary even in dreaming, by the lively regret which he expresses at being disturbed from his visionary enjoyments. See the Odes x. and Xxxvii.

See the beautiful description of Cupid, by Moschus, in his first idyl.

Father Rapin, in a Latin ode addressed to the grasshopper, has preserved some of the thoughts of our author:

O quæ virenti graminis in toro,
Cicada, blande sidis, et herbidos
Saltus oberras, otiosos
Ingeniosa ciere cantus.
Beu forte adultis floribus incubas,
Cœli caducis ebria fletibus, etc.

Has injured its elastic power.'
The fatal bow the urchin drew,
Swift from the string the arrow flew;
Oh! swift it flew as glancing flame,
And to my very soul it came!
'Fare thee well,' I heard him say,
As laughing wild he winged away;
Fare thee well, for now I know
The rain has not relaxed my bow;
It still can send a maddening dart,
As thou shalt own with all thy heart!'

ODE XXXIV.3

Oн thou, of all creation blest,
Sweet insect! that delight'st to rest
Upon the wild wood's leafy tops,
To drink the dew that morning drops,
And chirp thy song with such a glee,
That happiest kings may envy thee!
Whatever decks the velvet field,
Whate'er the circling seasons yield,
Whatever buds, whatever blows,
For thee it buds, for thee it grows.

Oh thou, that on the grassy bed
Which Nature's vernal hand has spread,
Reclinest soft, and turu'st thy song,
The dewy herbs and leaves among!
Whether thou liest on springing flowers,
Drunk with the balmy morning-showers,
Or, etc.

See what Licetus says about grasshoppers, cap. 93 and 185.

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 says, "Are not the grasshoppers happy in having dumb wives ?" This note is originally Henry Stephens'; but I chose rather to make Madame Dacier mv authority for it.

28

Nor yet art thou the peasant's fear,
To him thy friendly notes are dear;
For thou art mild as matin dew,
And still, when summer's flowery hue
Begins to paint the bloomy plain,
We hear thy sweet prophetic strain;
Thy sweet prophetic strain we hear,
And bless the notes and thee revere !
The Muses love thy shrilly tone;
Apollo calls thee all his own;
"Twas he who gave that voice to thee,
"Tis he who tunes thy minstrelsy.
Unworn by age's dim decline,
The fadeless blooms of youth are thine.
Melodious insect! child of earth !1
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 passed by thee
Thou seem'st a little deity!

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 :

Αρκει τεττιγας μεθυσαι δροσος, αλλά πιόντες
Αειδειν κυκνων εισι γεγωνότεροι.

In dew, that drops from morning's wings,
The gay Cicada sipping floats;
And, drunk with dew, his matin sings
Sweeter than any cygnet's notes.

2 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,
About him flew by hap, etc.

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 hope I shall be pardoned for inFroducing another Greek Anacreontic of Menage, not for its similitude to the subject of this ode, but for some faint traces of this natural simplieity, which it appears to me to have preserved:

Ερως ποτ' εν χορείαις
Των παρθένων αυτόν

ODE XXXV.2

CUPID once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless urchin not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee!
The bee awaked-with anger wild
The bee awaked and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
Oh mother! I am wounded through-
To Venus quick he runs, he flies!
I die with pain-in sooth I do!
Some serpent on a tiny wing-
Stung by some little angry thing,
A bee it was--for once, I know,
I heard a rustic call it so.'
Thus he spoke, and she the while
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said, 'My infant, if so much
Thou feel the little wild bee's touch,
How must the heart, ah, Cupid! be,
The hapless heart that's stung by thee!'

Την μοι φιλην Κορίνναν
Ως είδεν, ὡς προς αυτήν
Ηροσέδραμε τραχηλῳ
Δίδυμας τε χειρας άπτων
Φιλει με, μητερ, είπε.
Καλούμενη Κοριννα
Μητηρ, ερυθριάζει,
Ως παρθενος μεν ουσα.
Κ' αυτος δε δυσχεραίνων,
Ως όμμασι πλανηθείς,
Ερως ερυθριάζει.

Εγω δὲ οἱ παραστας,
Μη δυσχέραινε. φημι.
Κυπριν τε και Κορίνναν
Διαγνώσαι ουκ έχουσι
Και οἱ βλεποντες οξυ.

As dancing o'er the enamelled plain,
The floweret of the virgin train,
My soul's Corinna, lightly played,
Young Cupid saw the graceful maid;
He saw, and in a moment flew,
And round her neck his arms he threw;
And said, with smiles of infant joy,
'Oh! kiss me, mother, kiss thy boy !'
Unconscious of a mother's name,
The modest virgin blushed with shame!
And angry Cupid, scarce believing
That vision could be so deceiving,
Thus to mistake his Cyprian dame,
The little infant blushed with shame.
'Be not ashamed, my boy,' I cried,
For I was lingering by his side;
'Corinna and thy lovely mother,
Believe me, are so like each other,
That clearest eyes are oft betrayed,
And take thy Venus for the maid.'
Zitto, in his Cappriciosi Pensieri, has translated
this ode of Anacreon.

ODE XXXVI.1
IF hoarded gold possessed a power
To lengthen life's too fleeting hour,
And purchase from the hand of death
A little span, a moment's breath,
How I would love the precious ore
And every day should swell my store;
That when the Fates would send their
minion,

To waft me off on shadowy pinion,
I might some hours of life obtain,
And bribe him back to hell again.
But, since we ne'er can charm away
The mandate of that awful day,
Why do we vainly weep at fate,
And sigh for life's uncertain date?
The light of gold can ne'er illume
The dreary midnight of the tomb!
And why should I then pant for trea-

sures?

As lulled in slumber I was laid,
Bright visions o'er my fancy played!
With virgins, blooming as the dawn,
I seemed to trace the opening lawn;
Light, on tiptoe bathed in dew,
We flew, and sported as we flew !
Some ruddy striplings, young and
sleek,

With blush of Bacchus on their cheek
Saw me trip the flowery wild
With dimpled girls, and slily smiled-
Smiled indeed with wanton glee;
But ah! 'twas plain they envied me.
And still I flew and now I caught
The

panting nymphs, and fondly thought

To kiss-when all my dream of joys,
Dimpled girls and ruddy boys,
All were gone !4 'Alas!' I said,
Sighing for the illusions fled,
'Sleep! again my joys restore,

Mine be the brilliant round of plea-Oh: let me dream them o'er and

sures;

The goblet rich, the board of frienas,
Whose flowing souls the goblet blends!
Mine be the nymph whose form reposes
Seductive on that bed of roses;
And oh! be mine the soul's excess,
Expiring in her warm caress!

ODE XXXVII.3

"Twas night, and many a circling bowl Had deeply warmed my swimming soul;

1 Fontenelle has translated this ode, in his dialogue between Anacreon and Aristotle in the shades, where he bestows the prize of wisdom upon the poet.

This communion of friendship, which sweetened the bowl of Anacreon, has not been forgotten by the author of the following scholium, where the blessings of life are enumerated with Proverbial simplicity:

of mortal blessings here, the first is health, And next, those charms by which the eye we

move;

The third is wealth unwounding, guiltless wealth, And then, an intercourse with those we love!

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 I believe he suffered for his Anacreon. 'Fuit olim fateor (says he, in a note upon Longinus), cum Sapphonem amabam. Sed ex quo

o'er !' 5

ODE XXXVIII.

LET us drain the nectared bowl,
Let us raise the song of soul
To him, the god who loves so well
The nectared bowl, the choral swell!
Him, who instructs the sons of earth
To thrid the tangled dance of mirth;
Him, who was nursed with infant Love,
And cradled in the Paphian grove ;

illa me perditissima fœmina pene miserum perdidit cum sceleratissimo suo congerrone (Anacreontem dico, si nescis Lector), noli sperare,' etc. etc. He adduces on this ode the authority of Plato, who allowed ebriety, at 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:

Ουδεις φιλοπότης εστιν ανθρωπος κακος. 'No lover of drinking was ever a vicious man.' Nonnus says of Bacchus, almost in the same words that Anacreon uses :

Εγρόμενος δε Παρθενον ουκ' εκίχησε, και ηθελεν αυθις ιανειν. Waking, he lost the phantom's charms, He found no beauty in his arms; Again to slumber he essayed, Again to clasp the shadowy maid! -Longepierre.

5 Doctor Johnson, in his preface to Shakspeare, animadverting upon the commentators of that

Him, that the snowy Queen of Charms | To him, the god who loves so well
Has fondled in her twining arms.
From him that dream of transport
flows,

The nectared bowl, the choral swell!

Which sweet intoxication knows;
With him the brow forgets to darkle,
And brilliant graces learn to sparkle,
Behold my boys a goblet bear,
Whose sunny foam bedews the air.
Where are now the tear, the sigh?
To the winds they fly, they fly!
Grasp the bowl; in nectar sinking,
Man of sorrow, drown thy thinking!
Oh! can the tears we lend to thought

In life's account avail us aught?
Can we discern, with all our lore,
The path we're yet to journey o'er?
No, no, the walk of life is dark,
"Tis wine alone can strike a spark !1
Then let me quaff the foamy tide,
And through the dance meandering
glide;

Let me imbibe the spicy breath
Of odours chafed to fragrant death :
Or from the kiss of love inhale
A more voluptuous, richer gale!
To souls that court the phantom Care,
Let him retire and shroud him there;
While we exhaust the nectared bowl,
And swell the choral song of soul

poet, who pretended in every little coincidence of thought to detect an imitation of some ancient poet, alludes in the following words to the line of Anacreon before us: I have been told that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, "I tried to sleep again," the author imitates Anacreon, who had, like any other man, the same wish on the same occasion.'

The brevity of life allows arguments for the voluptuary as well as the moralist. Among many parallel passages which Longepierre has adduced, I shall content myself with this epigram from the Anthologia

Λουσάμενοι, Προδίκη, πυκασώμεθα, και τον ακ

ρατον

Ελκωμεν, κυλικας μείζονας αράμενοι.
Ραιος ὁ χαιροντων εστι βιος. είτα τα λοιπα
Γήρας κωλύσει, και το τέλος θάνατος.

Of which the following is a loose paraphrase:
Fly, my beloved, to yonder stream,

We'll plunge us from the noontide beam!
Then cull the rose's humid bud,
And dip it in our goblet's flood.
Our age of bliss, my nymph, shall fly
As sweet, though passing, as that sigh
Which seems to whisper o'er your lip,
'Come, while you may, of rapture sip.'

ODE XXXIX.

How I love the festive boy,
Tripping with the dance of joy!
How I love the mellow sage,
Smiling through the veil of age!
And whene'er this man of years
In the dance of joy appears,
Age is on his temples hung,
But his heart-his heart is young !2

ODE XL.

I KNOW that Heaven ordains me here
To run this mortal life's career;
The scenes which I have journeyed
o'er

Return no more-alas! no more;
And all the path I've yet to go

I neither know nor ask to know.
Then surely, Care, thou canst not twine
Thy fetters round a soul like mine;
No, no, the heart that feels with me
Can never be a slave to thee !3
And oh before the vital thrill,
Which trembles at my heart, is still,

For age will steal the rosy form,
And chill the pulse, which trembles warm!
And death-alas! that hearts, which thrill
Like yours and mine, should e'er be still!

2 Saint Pavin makes the same distinction in a sonnet to a young girl:

Je sais bien que les destinées
Ont mal compassé nos années;
Ne regardez que mon amour.
Peut-être en serez vous émue:
Il est jeune, et n'est que du jour,
Belle Iris, que je vous ai vue.

Fair and young thou bloomest now,
And I full many a year have told;
But read the heart and not the brow,
Thou shalt not find my love is old.
My love's a child, and thou canst say
How much his little age may be,
For he was born the very day

That first I set my eyes on thee!

Longepierre quotes an epigram here from the Anthologia, on account of the similarity of a particular phrase. It is by no means Anacreontic, but has an interesting simplicity which induced me to paraphrase it, and may atone for its intrus on:

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At length to Fortune, and to you, Delusive Hope! a last adieu. The charm that once beguiled is o'er, And I have reached my destined shore! Away, away, your flattering arts May now betray some simpler hearts, And you will smile at their believing, And they shall weep at your deceiving! 'The same commentator has quoted an epitaph, written upon our poet by Julian, where he makes him give the precepts of good fellowship even from the tomb":

This lesson oft in life I sung,

And from my grave I still shall cry, 'Drink, mortal! drink, while time is young, Ere death has made thee cold as I.'

* Thus Horace :

Quid habes illius, illius
Que spirabat amores,
Qua me surpuerat mihi.

And does there then remain but this

And hast thou lost each rosy ray Of her, who breathed the soul of bliss, And stole me from myself away?

And, while she weaves a frontlet fair
Of hyacinth to deck my hair,
Oh! let me snatch her sidelong kisses,
And that shall be my bliss of blisses!
My soul, to festive feeling true,
One pang of envy never knew;
And little has it learned to dread
The gall that Envy's tongue can shed.
Away-I hate the slanderous dart,
Which steals to wound the unwary
heart;

And oh! I hate, with all my soul,
Discordant clamours o'er the bowl,
Where every cordial heart should be,
Attuned to peace and harmony.
Come, let us hear the soul of song
Expire the silver harp along :
And through the dance's ringlet move,
With maidens mellowing into love;
Thus simply happy, thus at peace,
Sure such a life should never cease!

ODE XLIII.

WHILE our rosy fillets shed
Blushes o'er each fervid head,
With many a cup and many a smile
The festal moments we beguile.
And while the harp, impassioned, flings
Tuneful rapture from the strings,✦

3 The character of Anacreon is here very strikingly depicted. His love of social, harmo nized pleasures is expressed with a warmth, amiable and endearing. Among the epigrams 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,
Νεικέα και πολέμον δακρυόεντα λέγει.
Αλλ' όστις Μουσεών τε, και αγλαα δωρ' Αφροδίτης
Ευμμισγών, ερατης μνήσκεται ευφροσυνης.
When to the lip the brimming cup is pressed,
And hearts are all afloat upon the stream,
Then banish from my board the unpolished guest,
Who makes the feats of war his barbarous
theme.

But bring the man, who o'er his goblet wreathes
The Muse's laurel with the Cyprian flower:
Oh! give me him whose heart expansive breathes
All the refinements of the social hour.

On the barbiton a host of authorities may be collected, which, after all, leave us ignorant of the nature of the instrument. There is scarcely any point upon which we are so totally uninformed as the music of the ancients. The

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