ODE LXV.

LIKE some wanton filly sporting,

Maid of Thrace, thou fly'st my courting.
Wanton filly! tell me why

Thou trip'st away, with scornful eye,

And seem'st to think my doating heart
Is novice in the bridling art?

Believe me, girl, it is not so;

Thou'lt find this skilful hand can throw

The reins around that tender form,
However wild, however warm.

Yes-trust me I can tame thy force,

And turn and wind thee in the course.

This ode, which is addressed to some Thracian girl, exists in Heraclides, and has been imitated very frequently by Horace, as all the annotators have remarked. Madame Dacier rejects the allegory, which runs so obviously through the poem, and supposes it to have been addressed to a young mare belonging to Polycrates.

Pierius, in the fourth book of his Hieroglyphics, cites this ode, and informs us that the horse was the hieroglyphical emblem of pride.

Though, wasting now thy careless hours, Thou sport amid the herbs and flowers, Soon shalt thou feel the rein's control, And tremble at the wished-for goal!

ODE LXVI.

To thee, the Queen of nymphs divine,
Fairest of all that fairest shine;

To thee, who rul'st with darts of fire
This world of mortals, young Desire!
And oh! thou nuptial Power, to thee
Who bear'st of life the guardian key,
Breathing my soul in fervent praise,
And weaving wild my votive lays,
For thee, O Queen! I wake the lyre,

For thee, thou blushing young Desire,

This ode is introduced in the Romance of Theodorus Prodromus, and is that kind of epithalamium which was sung like a scolium at the nuptial banquet.

Among the many works of the impassioned Sappho, of which time and ignorant superstition have deprived us, the loss of her epithalamiums is not one of the least that we deplore. The following lines are cited as a relic of one of those poems:

Ολβιε γαμβρε. σοι μεν δη γαμος ὡς apao,
Εκτετελεστό, εχεις δε παρθενον αν αραο.

See Scaliger, in his Poetics, on the Epithalamium.

And oh! for thee, thou nuptial Power,
Come, and illume this genial hour.

Look on thy bride, too happy boy, And while thy lambent glance of joy Plays over all her blushing charms, Delay not, snatch her to thine arms, Before the lovely, trembling prey, Like a young birdling, wing away! Turn, Stratocles, too happy youth, Dear to the Queen of amorous truth, And dear to her, whose yielding zone Will soon resign her all thine own. Turn to Myrilla, turn thine eye, Breathe to Myrilla, breathe thy sigh. To those bewitching beauties turn; For thee they blush, for thee they burn.

Not more the rose, the queen of flowers, Outblushes all the bloom of bowers, Than she unrivall'd grace discloses, The sweetest rose, where all are roses. Oh! may the sun, benignant, shed His blandest influence o'er thy bed;

ODE LXVIII.

Now Neptune's month our sky deforms,
The angry night-cloud teems with storms;
And savage winds, infuriate driven,
Fly howling in the face of heaven!

Now, now, my friends, the gathering gloom
With roseate rays of wine illume:

And while our wreaths of parsley spread
Their fadeless foliage round our head,

Let's hymn th' almighty power of wine,
And shed libations on his shrine!

This is composed of two fragments; the seventieth and eighty-first in Barnes. They are both found in Eustathius.