ODE LXXV.

SPIRIT of Love, whose locks unroll'd,
Stream on the breeze like floating gold;
Come, within a fragrant cloud

Blushing with light, thy votary shroud;

This fragment, which is extant in Athenæus (Barnes, 101.), is supposed, on the authority of Chamæleon, to have been addressed to Sappho. We have also a stanza attributed to her, which some romancers have supposed to be her answer to Anacreon. 66 Mais par malheur (as Bayle says), Sappho vint au monde environ cent ou six vingt ans avant Anacréon." Nouvelles de la Rép. des Lett. tom. ii. de Novembre, 1684. The following is her fragment, the compliment of which is finely imagined; she supposes that the Muse has dictated the verses of Anacreon:

Κεινον, ω χρυσοθρονε Μουσ' ενισπες
Ύμνον, εκ της καλλιγυναικος εσθλας
Τηϊος χωρας ὁν αειδε τερπνως

Πρεσβυς αγαυος.

Oh Muse! who sit'st on golden throne
Full many a hymn of witching tone

The Teian sage is taught by thee;
But, Goddess, from thy throne of gold,
The sweetest hymn thou'st ever told,

He lately learn'd and sung for me.

And, on those wings that sparkling play, Waft, oh, waft me hence away!

Love my soul is full of thee,

Alive to all thy luxury.

But she, the nymph for whom I glow,
The lovely Lesbian mocks my woe;
Smiles at the chill and hoary hues,
That time upon my forehead strews.
Alas! I fear she keeps her charms,
In store for younger, happier arms!

ODE LXXVI.

HITHER, gentle Muse of mine,
Come and teach thy votary old
Many a golden hymn divine,

For the nymph with vest of gold.

Pretty nymph, of tender age,

Fair thy silky locks unfold;

Listen to a hoary sage,

Sweetest maid with vest of gold!

Formed of the 124th and 119th fragments in Barnes, both of which are to be found in Scaliger's Poetics.

De Pauw thinks that those detached lines and couplets, which Scaliger has adduced as examples in his Poetics, are by no means authentic, but of his own fabrication.

ODE LXXVII.

WOULD that I were a tuneful lyre,
Of burnish'd ivory fair,

Which, in the Dionysian choir,
Some blooming boy should bear!

Would that I were a golden vase,

That some bright nymph might hold

My spotless frame, with blushing grace,
Herself as pure as gold!

This is generally inserted among the remains of Alcæus.

Some, however, have attributed it to Anacreon.

poet's twenty-second ode, and the notes.

See our

ODE LXXVIII.

WHEN Cupid sees how thickly now,
The snows of Time fall o'er my brow,
Upon his wing of golden light,

He passes with an eaglet's flight,

And flitting onward seems to say,

"Fare thee well, thou'st had thy day!"

See Barnes, 173d. This fragment, to which I have taken the liberty of adding a turn not to be found in the original, is cited by Lucian in his short essay on the Gallic Hercules.