The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Part 13

Then wake thee from thy voiceless slumbers, And to the soft and Phrygian numbers, Which, tremblingly, my lips repeat, Send echoes, from thy chord as sweet.

'Tis thus the swan, with fading notes, Down the Cayster's current floats, While amorous breezes linger round, And sigh responsive sound for sound.

Muse of the Lyre! illume my dream, Thy Phoebus is my fancy's theme; And hallowed is the harp I bear, And hallowed is the wreath I wear, Hallowed by him, the G.o.d of lays, Who modulates the choral maze.

I sing the love which Daphne twined Around the G.o.dhead's yielding mind; I sing the blushing Daphne's flight From this ethereal son of Light; And how the tender, timid maid Flew trembling to the kindly shade.

Resigned a form, alas, too fair, Arid grew a verdant laurel there; Whose leaves, with sympathetic thrill, In terror seemed to tremble still!

The G.o.d pursued, with winged desire; And when his hopes were all on fire, And when to clasp the nymph he thought, A lifeless tree was all he caught; And 'stead of sighs that pleasure heaves, Heard but the west-wind in the leaves!

But, pause, my soul, no more, no more-- Enthusiast, whither do I soar?

This sweetly-maddening dream of soul Hath hurried me beyond the goal.

Why should I sing the mighty darts Which fly to wound celestial hearts, When ah, the song, with sweeter tone, Can tell the darts that wound my own?

Still be Anacreon, still inspire The descant of the Teian lyre: Still let the nectared numbers float Distilling love in every note!

And when some youth, whose glowing soul Has felt the Paphian star's control, When he the liquid lays shall hear, His heart will flutter to his ear, And drinking there of song divine, Banquet on intellectual wine![2]

[1] This hymn to Apollo is supposed not to have been written by Anacreon; and it is undoubtedly rather a sublimer flight than the Teian wing is accustomed to soar. But in a poet of whose works so small a proportion has reached us, diversity of style is by no means a safe criterion. If we knew Horace but as a satirist, should we easily believe there could dwell such animation in his lyre? Suidas says that our poet wrote hymns, and this perhaps is one of them. We can perceive in what an altered and imperfect state his works are at present, when we find a scholiast upon Horace citing an ode from the third book of Anacreon.

[2] Here ends the last of the odes in the Vatican MS., whose authority helps to confirm the genuine antiquity of them all, though a few have stolen among the number, which we may hesitate in attributing to Anacreon.

ODE LXI.[1]

Youth's endearing charms are fled; h.o.a.ry locks deform my head; Bloomy graces, dalliance gay, All the flowers of life decay.[2]

Withering age begins to trace Sad memorials o'er my face; Time has shed its sweetest bloom All the future must be gloom.

This it is that sets me sighing; Dreary is the thought of dying![3]

Lone and dismal is the road, Down to Pluto's dark abode; And, when once the journey's o'er, Ah! we can return no more!

[1] The intrusion of this melancholy ode, among the careless levities of our poet, reminds us of the skeletons which the Egyptians used to hang up in the banquet-rooms, to inculcate a thought of mortality even amidst the dissipations of mirth. If it were not for the beauty of its numbers, the Teian Muse should disown this ode.

[2] Horace often, with feeling and elegance, deplores the fugacity of human enjoyments.

[3] Regnier, a libertine French poet, has written some sonnets on the approach of death, full of gloomy and trembling repentance. Chaulieu, however, supports more consistently the spirit of the Epicurean philosopher. See his poem, addressed to the Marquis de Lafare.

ODE LXII.[1]

Fill me, boy, as deep a draught, As e'er was filled, as e'er was quaffed; But let the water amply flow, To cool the grape's intemperate glow;[2]

Let not the fiery G.o.d be single, But with the nymphs in union mingle.

For though the bowl's the grave of sadness, Ne'er let it be the birth of madness.

No, banish from our board tonight The revelries of rude delight; To Scythians leave these wild excesses, Ours be the joy that soothes and blesses!

And while the temperate bowl we wreathe, In concert let our voices breathe, Beguiling every hour along With harmony of soul and song.

[1] This ode consists of two fragments, which are to be found in Athenaeus, book x., and which Barnes, from the similarity of their tendency, has combined into one. I think this a very justifiable liberty, and have adopted it in some other fragments of our poet.

[2] It was Amphictyon who first taught the Greeks to mix water with their wine; in commemoration of which circ.u.mstance they erected altars to Bacchus and the nymphs.

ODE LXIII.[1]

To Love, the soft and blooming child, I touch the harp in descant wild; To Love, the babe of Cyprian bowers, The boy, who breathes and blushes flowers; To Love, for heaven and earth adore him, And G.o.ds and mortals bow before him!

[1] "This fragment is preserved in Clemens Alexandrinus, Storm, lib. vi.

and In a.r.s.enius, Collect. Graec."--BARNES.

It appears to have been the opening of a hymn in praise of Love.

ODE LXIV.[1]

Haste thee, nymph, whose well-aimed spear Wounds the fleeting mountain-deer!

Dian, Jove's immortal child, Huntress of the savage wild!

G.o.ddess with the sun-bright hair!

Listen to a people's prayer.

Turn, to Lethe's river turn, There thy vanquished people mourn![2]

Come to Lethe's wavy sh.o.r.e, Tell them they shall mourn no more.

Thine their hearts, their altars thine; Must they, Dian--must they pine?

[1] This hymn to Diana is extant in Hephaestion. There is an anecdote of our poet, which has led some to doubt whether he ever wrote any odes of this kind. It is related by the Scholiast upon Pindar (Isthmionic. od. ii.

v. 1. as cited by Barnes) that Anaecreon being asked why he addressed all his hymns to women, and none to the deities? answered, "Because women are my deities."

I have a.s.sumed, it will be seen, in reporting this anecdote, the same liberty which I have thought it right to take in translating some of the odes; and it were to be wished that these little infidelities were always allowable in interpreting the writings of the ancients.

[2] Lethe, a river of Iona, according to Strabo, falling into the Meander.

In its neighborhood was the city called Magnesia, in favor of whose inhabitants our poet is supposed to have addressed this supplication to Diana. It was written (as Madame Dacier conjectures) on the occasion of some battle, in which the Magnesians had been defeated.