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But mourn, ye sylvan Scenes and shady Bowers;
Weep, all ye Fountains; languish, all ye Flowers!
If in a desert Damon but appear,
To Cælia's eyes a desert is more fair

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Than all your charms, when Damon is not there!
Gods! what soft words, what sweet delusive wiles
He boasts and, oh! those dear undoing smiles!
Pleas'd with our ruin, to his arms we run:
To be undone by him, who would not be undone?
Alas! I rave! ye swelling Torrents, roll
Your watery tribute o'er my love-sick soul!
To cool my heart, your waves, ye Oceans, bear!
Oh! vain are all your waves, for Love is there !
But ah! what sudden thought to frenzy moves
My tortur d soul?-perhaps, my Damon loves!
Some fatal beauty, yielding all her charms,
Detains the lovely traitor from my arms!
Blast her, ye Skies! let instant vengeance seize
Those guilty charms, whose crime it is to please!
Damon is mine!-fond maid, thy fears subdue!
Am I not jealous? and my charmer true?
O! Heaven! from jealousy my bosom save!
Cruel as Death, insatiate as the Grave!

Ye powers of all the ills that ever curst
Our sex, sure man, dissembling man is worst!
Like forward boys, awhile in wanton play,
He sports with hearts, then throws the toys away:
With specious wiles weak woman he assails;
He swears, weeps, smiles, he flatters, and prevails:
Then, in the moment, when the maid believes,
The perjur'd traitor triumphs, scorns, and leaves.
How oft my Damon swore, th' all-seeing Sun
Should change his course, and rivers backward

run,

Ere his fond heart should range, or faithless prove
To the bright object of his stedfast love!
O instant change thy course, all-seeing Sun!
Damon is false! ye Rivers backward run!

But die, O wretched Celia, die in vain
Thus to the fields and floods you breathe your pain!
The tear is fruitless, and the tender sigh,
And life a load!-forsaken Cælia, die!
Fly swifter, Time! O! speed the joyful hour!
Receive me, Grave!-then I shall love no more!
Ah! wretched maid, so sad a cure to prove!
Ab! wretched maid, to fly to Death from Love!
Yet oh! when this poor frame no more shall live,
Be happy, Damon! may not Damon grieve!
Ah me! I'm vain! my death can not appear
Worth the vast price of but a single tear.
Forlorn, abandon'd, to the rocks I go;
But they have learnt new cruelties of you!
Alone, relenting Echo with me mourns,
And faint with grief she scarce my sighs returns!
Then, sighs, adieu! ye nobler passions, rise!
Be wise, fond maid!-but who in love is wise?
I rage, I rail, th' extremes of anger. prove,
Nay, almost hate!-then love thee beyond love!
Pity, kind Heaven, and right an injur'd maid!
Yet, oh yet, spare the dear deceiver's head!
If from the sultry suns at noon-tide hours
He seeks the covert of the breezy bowers,
Awake, O South, and where my charmer lies,
Bid roses bloom, and beds of fragrance rise!
Gently, O gently round in whispers fly,
Sigh to his sighs, and fan the glowing sky!
If o'er the waves he cuts the liquid way,
Be still, ye Waves, or round his vessel play!
And you, ye Winds, confine each ruder breath,
Lie hush'd in silence, and be calm as death!

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Now sounds the vault of Heaven with loud alarms,
And gods by gods embattling rush to arms:
Here stalk the Titans of portentous size,
Burst from their dungeons, and assault the skies!
And there, unchain'd from Erebus and Night,
Auxiliar giants aid the gods in fight:
An hundred arms each tower-like warrior rears,
And stares from fifty heads amid the stars;
The dreadful brotherhood stern-frowning stands,
And hurls an hundred rocks from hundred hands
The Titans rush'd with fury uncontrol'd:
Gods sunk on gods, o'er giant giant roll'd;
Then roar'd the Ocean with a dreadful sound,
Heaven shook with all its thrones, and groan'd the
Trembled th' eternal poles at every stroke, [ground,
And frighted Hell from its foundations shook:
Noise, horrid noise, th' aërial region fills,
Rocks dash on rocks, and hills encounter hills;
Through Earth, Air, Heaven, tumultuous clamours
And shouts of battle thunder in the skies,
Then Jove omnipotent display'd the god,
And all Olympus trembled as he trod:
He grasps ten thousand thunders in his hand,
Bares his red arm, and wields the forky brand;
Then aims the bolts, and bids his lightnings play;
They flash, and rend through Heaven their flaming
Redoubling blow on blow, in wrath he moves; [way:
The sing'd Earth groans, and burns with all her groves;
The floods, the billows, boiling hiss with fires,
And bickering flame, and smouldering smoke aspires:
A night of clouds blots out the golden day;
Full in their eyes the writhen lightnings play:
Ev'n Chaos burns: again Earth groans, Heaven roars,
As tumbling downward with its shining towers;
Or burst this Earth, torn from her central place,
With dire disruption from her deepest base:
Nor slept the Wind: the Wind new horrour forms,
Clouds dash on clouds before th' outrageous storms,
While, tearing up the sands, in drifts they rise,
And half the deserts mount th' encumber'd skies:
At once the tempest bellows, lightnings fly,
The thunders roar, and clouds involve the sky:
Stupendous were the deeds of heavenly might;
What less, when gods conflicting cope in fight?
Now Heaven its foes with horrid inroad gores,
And slow and sour recede the giant powers:

2 Ageon, Cottus, Gyges.

Here stalks Ægeon, here fierce Gyges moves,
There Cottus rends up hills with all their groves;
These hurl'd at once against the Titan bands
Three hundred mountains from three hundred hands:
And overshadowing, overwhelming bound
With chains infrangible beneath the ground;
Below this Earth, far as Earth's confines lie,
Through space unmeasur'd, from the starry sky;
Nine days an anvil of enormous weight,
Down rushing headlong from the aërial height,
Scarce reaches Earth; thence tost in giddy rounds.
Scarce reaches in nine days th' infernal bounds:
A wall of iron of stupendous height

Guards the dire dungeons, black with threefold night:

High o'er the horrours of th' eternal shade
The stedfast base of earth and seas is laid;
There in coercive durance Jove detains
The groaning Titans in afflictive chains.
A seat of woe! remote from chearful day,
Through gulphs impassable, a boundless way.
Above these realms a brazen structure stands
With brazen portals, fram'd by Neptune's hands;
Through chaos to the ocean's base it swells;
There stern Ægeon with his giants dwells;
Fierce guards of Jove! from hence the fountains
rise

That wash the earth, or wander through the skies;
That groaning murmur through the realm of woes,
Or feed the channels were the ocean flows;
Collected horrours throng the dire abodes,
Horrid and fell! detested ev'n by gods!
Enormous gulph! immense the bounds appear,
Wasteful and void, the journey of a year:
Where beating storms, as in wild whirls they fight,
Toss the pale wanderer, and retoss through night:
The powers immortal with affright survey
The hideous chasm, and seal it up from day. [rears
Hence through the vault of Heaven huge Atlas
His giant limbs, and props the golden spheres:
Here sable Night, and here the beainy Day,
Lodge and dislodge, alternate in their sway.
A brazen port the varying powers divides:
When Day forth issues, here the Night resides;
And when Night veils the skies, obsequious Day,
Re-entering, plunges from the starry way.
She from her lamp, with beaming radiance bright,
Pours o'er th' expanded Earth a flood of light:
But Night, by Sleep attended, rides in shades,
Brother of Death, and all that breathes invades:
From her 'foul womb they sprung, resistless powers,
Nurs'd in the horrours of Tartarean bowers,
Remote from Day, when with her flaming wheels
She mounts the skies, or paints the western hills:
With downy footsteps Sleep in silence glides
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the spacious tides;
The friend of life! Death unrelenting bears
An iron heart, and laughs at human cares;
She makes the mouldering race of man her prey,
And ev'n th' immortal powers detest her sway.

Thus fell the Titans from the realms above,
Beneath the thunder of almighty Jove;
Then Earth impregnate felt maternal woes, [throes:
And shook through all her frame with teeming
Hence rose Typhoeus, a gigantic birth,
A monster sprung from Tartarus and Earth,
A match for gods in might! on high he spreads
From his huge trunk an hundred dragons heads,

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And from an hundred mouths in vengeance flings
Envenom'd foam, and darts an hundred stings;
Horrour, terrific, frowns from every brow,
And like a furnace his red eye-balls glow;
Fires dart from every crest; and, as he turns,
Keen splendours flash, and all the giant burns:
Whene'er he speaks, in echoing thunders rise
An hundred voices, and affright the skies,
Unutterably fierce! the bright abodes
Frequent they shake, and terrify the gods:
Now bellowing like a savage bull, they roar,
Or angry lions in the midnight hour;
Now yell like furious whelps, or hiss like snakes;
The rocks rebound, and every mountain shakes:
He hurl'd defiance 'gainst th' immortal powers,
And Heaven had seiz'd with all its shining towers,
But, at the voice of Jove, from pole to pole
Red lightnings flash, and raging thunders roll,
Rattling o'er all th' expansion of the skies,
Bolt after bolt o'er earth and ocean flies.
Stern frowns the god amidst the lightnings blaze,
Olympus shakes from his eternal base ;·
Trembles the earth: fierce flame involves the poles,
Devours the ground, and o'er the billows rolls:
Fires from Typhoeus flash: with dreadful sound
Storms rattle, thunder rolls, and groans the ground;
Above, below, the conflagration roars,
Ev'n the seas kindled burn through all their shores,
Deluge of fire! Farth rocks her tottering coasts,
And gloomy Pluto shakes with all his ghosts;
Ev'n the pale Titans, chain'd on burning floors,
Start at the din that rends th' infernal shores:
Then, in full wrath, Jove all the god applies,
And all his thunders burst at once the skies;
And rushing gloomy from th' Olympian brow,
He blasts the giant with th' almighty blow;
The giant tumbling sinks beneath the wound,
And with enormous ruin rocks the ground:
Nor yet the lightnings of th' Almighty stay, [way;
Through the sing'd earth they burst their burning
Earth kindling inward, melts in all her caves,
And hissing floats with fierce metallic waves:
As iron fusile from the furnace flows,
Or molten ore with keen effulgence glows,
When the dire bolts of Jove stern Vulcan frames,
In burning channels roll the liquid flames;
Thus melted earth, and Jove, from realms on high,
Plunge the huge giant to the nether sky.

Then from Typhous sprung the winds that bear
Storms on their wings, and thunder in the air:
But from the gods descend of milder kind,
The East, the West, the South, and Boreal wind;
These in soft whispers breathe a friendly breeze,
Play through the groves, or sport upon the seas;
They fan the sultry air with cooling gales,
And waft from realm to realm the flying sails:
The rest in storms of sounding whirlwinds fly,
Toss the wild waves, and battle in the sky;
Fatal to man! at once all Ocean roars,
And scatter'd navies bulge on distant shores.
Then thundering o'er the earth they rend their

way,

Grass, herb, and flower, beneath their rage decay; While towers, and domes, vain boasts of human trust,

Torn from their inmost base, are whelm'd in dust,
Thus Heaven asserted its eternal reign
O'er the proud giants, and Titanic train;
And now in peace the gods their Jove obey,
And all the thrones of Heaven adore his sway.

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ADVERTISEMENT.

Now rising shades a solemn gloom display,
O'er the wide Earth, and o'er th' ethereal way:
All night the sailor marks the northern team,
And golden circlet of Orion's beam:

Shall 1, all lost to shame, to Jason fly?
Then, Shame, farewell! Adieu for ever, Fame!
And yet I must-if Jason bleeds, I die!
Hail, black Disgrace! be fam'd for guilt, my name !
Live! Jason, live! enjoy the vital air!

Live through my aid! and fly where wings can
bear!

But when he flies, ye poisons, lend your powers, THE translator has taken the liberty, in the fol- That day, Medea treads th' infernal shores! lowing version from the Argonautics of Apollo-Then, wretched maid, thy lot is endless shame, nius, as well as in the story of Talus, to omit Then the proud dames of Colchos blast thy name: whatever has not an immediate relation to the I hear them cry- The false Medea's dead, subject; yet hopes that a due connection is not Through guilty passion for a stranger's bed ; wanting, and that the reader will not be dis- Medea, careless of her virgin fame, pleased with these short sketches from a poet, Preferr'd a stranger to a father's name!' who is affirmed to be every where sublime, by O may I rather yield this vital breath, no less a critic than Longinus; and from whom Than bear that base dishonour, worse than death!" many verses are borrowed by so great a poet as Thus wail'd the fair, and seiz'd, with horrid joy, Virgil. Drugs, foes to life, and potent to destroy; A magazine of death! Again she pours From her swoln eye-balls tears in shining showers; With grief insatiate, and with trembling hands, All comfortlesss the cask of death expands: A sudden fear her labouring soul invades, Struck with the horrours of th' infernal shades: She stands deep-musing with a faded brow, Absorpt in thought, a monument of woe! While all the comforts that on life attend, The cheerful converse, and the faithful friend, By thought deep-imag'd in her bosom play, Endearing life, and charm despair away: Th' all-cheering suns with sweeter light arise, And every object brightens to her eyes: Then from her hand the baneful drug she throws, Consents to live, recover'd from her woes; Resolv'd the magic virtue to betray, She waits the dawn, and calls the lazy day: Time seems to stand, or backward drive his wheels: The hours she chides, and eyes the eastern hills: At length the dawn with orient beams appears, The shades disperse, and man awakes to cares. Studious to please, her graceful length of hair With art she binds, that wanton'd with the air; From her soft cheek she wipes the tear away, And bids keen lightnings from her eyes to play; From limb to limb refreshing unguents pours, Unguents, that breathe of Heaven, in copious showers:

A deep repose the weary wanderer shares,
And the faint watchman sleeps away his cares;
Ev'n the fond mother, while all breathless lies
Her child of love, in slumber seals her eyes;
No sound of village-dog, no noise invades
The death-like silence of the midnight shades:
Alone Medea wakes: To love a prey,
Restless she rolls, and groans the night away:
Now the fire-breathing bulls command her cares;
She thinks on Jason, and for Jason fears:
In sad review, on horrours horrours rise; [flies:
Quick beats her heart, from thought to thought she
As from replenish'd urns, with dubious ray,
The sun-beams dancing from the surface play,
Now here, now there, the trembling radiance falls
Alternate flashing round th' illumin'd walls;
Thus fluttering bounds the trembling virgin's blood,
And from her shining eyes descends a flood:
Now raving with resistless flames she glows,
Now sick with love she melts with softer woes:
The tyrant god, of every thought possest,
Beats in each pulse, and stings and racks her breast:
Now she resolves the magic to betray

To tame the bulls, now yield him up a prey:
Again, the drugs disdaining to supply,
She loaths the light, and meditates to die:
Anon, repelling with a brave disdain

The coward thought, she nourishes the pain:
Thus tost, retost with furious storms of cares,
On the cold ground she rolls, and thus with tears:
"Ah me! where'er 1 turn, before my eyes
A dreadful view, on sorrows sorrows rise!
Tost in a giddy whirl of strong desire,
I glow, I burn, yet bless the pleasing fire.
O bad this spirit from its prison fled,
By Dian sent to wander with the dead,

Ere the proud Grecians view'd the Colchian skies;
Ere Jason, lovely Jason, met these eyes!
Hell gave the shining mischief to our coast,
Medea saw him, and Medea's lost-
But why these sorrows? if the powers on high
His death decree, die, wretched Jason, die!
Shall I elude my sire? my art betray?
Ah me! what words shall purge the guilt away!
But could I yield-O whither must I run
To find the man— whom Virtue bids me shun?

Her robe she next assumes; bright clasps of gold
Close to the lessening waist the robe infold;
Down from her swelling loins, the rest unbound
Floats in rich waves redundant o'er the ground:
Last, with a shining veil her cheeks she shades,
Then, swimming smooth along,magnificently treads.
Thus forward moves the fairest of her kind,
Blind to the future, to the present blind:
Twelve maids, attendants on her virgin bower,
Alike unconscious of the bridal hour,
Join to the car the mules: dire rites to pay,
To Hecate's black fane she bends her way;
A juice she bears, whose magic virtue tames
(Through fell Persephone) the rage of flames;
It gives the hero, strong in matchless might,
To stand secure of harms in mortal fight;
It mocks the sword: the sword without a wound,
Leaps as from marble, shiver'd to the ground:
She mounts the car'; nor rode the nymph alone;
On either side two lovely damsels shone :

" $69.

Her hand with skill th' embroider'd rein controls;
Back fly the streets, as swift the chariot rolls.
Along the wheel-worn road they hold their way,
The domes retreat, the sinking towers decay:
Bare to the knee succinct a damsel train
Behind attends, and glitters tow'rd the plain.
As when her limbs divine, Diana laves
In fair Parthenius, or th' Amnesian waves,
Sublime in royal state the bounding roes
Whirl her bright car along the mountain brows;
Swift to her fane in pomp the goddess moves;
The nymphs attend that haunt the shady groves,
Th' Amnesian fount, or silver-streaming rills;
Nymphs of the vales, or Oreads of the hills!
The fawning beasts before the goddess play,
Or, trembling, savage adoration pay:
Thus on her car sublime the nymph appears,
The crowd falls back, and as she moves reveres ;
Swift to the fane aloft her course she bends;
The fane she reaches, and to earth descends:
Then to her train-" Ah me! I fear we stray,
Misled by Folly to this lonely way!
Alas! should Jason with his Greeks appear,
Where should we fly? I fear, alas, I fear!
No more the Colchian youths, and virgin train,
Haunt the cool shade, or tread in dance the plain:
But since alone ;-with sports beguile the hours,
Come chaunt the song, or pluck the blooming flowers:
Pluck every sweet, to deck your virgin bowers !"
Then warbling soft, she lifts her heavenly voice;
But sick with mighty love, the song is noise;
She hears from every note a discord rise,
Till, pausing, on her tongue the music dies;
She hates each object, every face offends;
In every wish, her soul to Jason sends;
With sharpen'd eyes the distant lawn explores,
To find the object whom her soul adores:
At every whisper of the passing air,

She starts, she turns, and hopes her Jason there;
Again she fondly looks, nor looks in vain;
He comes, her Jason shines along the plain.
As when, emerging from the watery way,
Refulgent Sirius lifts his golden ray,
He shines terrific! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death;
Such to the nymph approaching Jason shows,
Bright author of unutterable woes;
Before her eyes a swimming darkness spread,
Her flush'd cheek glow'd, her very heart was dead;
No more her knees their wonted office knew,
Fix'd, without motion, as to earth she grew :
Her train recedes; the meeting lovers gaze
In silent wonder, and in still amaze :
As two fair cedars on the mountain's brow,
Pride of the groves! with roots adjoining grow;
Erect and motionless the stately trees

Awhile remain, while sleeps each fanning breeze,
Till from th' Eolian caves a blast unbound [sound;
Bends their proud tops, and bids their boughs re-
Thus gazing they, till by the breath of love
Strongly at length inspir'd, they speak, they move:
With smiles the love-sick virgin he survey'd,
And fondly thus addrest the blooming maid:

"Dismiss, my fair, my love, thy virgin fear; 'Tis Jason speaks, no enemy is here! Man, haughty man, is of obdurate kind; But Jason bears no proud, inhuman mind, By gentle manners, softest arts refin'd.

€ 947.

Whom wouldst thou fly? Stay, lovely virgin, stay!
Speak every thought! far hence be fears away!
Speak! and be truth in every accent found!
Dread to deceive! we tread on hallow'd ground'.
By the stern power who guards this sacred place,
By the illustrious authors of thy race;

By Jove, to whom the stranger's cause belongs,
To whom the suppliant, and who feels the wrongs;
O guard me, save me, in the needful hour!
Without thy aid, thy Jason is no more;
To thee a suppliant, in distress I bend,
To thee a stranger, and who wants a friend!
Then, when between us seas and mountains rise,
Medea's name shall sound in distant skies;
All Greece to thee shall owe her heroes fates,
And bless Medea through her hundred states.
The mother and the wife, who now in vain
Roll their sad eyes fast-streaming o'er the main,
Shall stay their tears; the mother and the wife
Shall bless thee for a son's or husband's life!
Fair Ariadne, sprung from Minos' bed,
Sav'd the brave Theseus, and with Theseus fled,
Forsook her father, and her native plain,
And stemm'd the tumults of the surging main;
Yet the stern sire relented, and forgave
The maid, whose only crime it was to save:
Ev'n the just gods forgave: and now on high
A star she shines, and beautifies the sky :
What blessings then shall righteous Heaven decree
For all our heroes sav'd, and sav'd by thee!
Heaven gave thee not, to kill, so soft an air,
And Cruelty sure never look'd so fair!"

He ceas'd; but left so charming on her ear
His voice, that listening still she seem'd to hear:
Her eye to earth she bends with modest grace,
And Heaven in smiles is open'd in her face.
A glance she steals; but rosy blushes spread
O'er her fair cheek, and then she drops her head:
A thousand words at once to speak she tries;
In vain but speaks a thousand with her eyes:
Trembling, the shining casket she expands,
Then gives the magic virtue to his hands;
And had the power been granted to convey
Her heart-had given her very heart away.

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SIXTEEN ODES OF ANACREON

Undique nubem.

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ODE XV.

HAPPY LIFE.

THE wealth of Gyges I despise ;
Gems are useless glittering toys.
Gold I leave, and such vain things,
To the low aim and pride of kings.

Let my hair with unguents flow,
With rosy garlands crown my brow!
The present moment I enjoy,

Doom'd in the next, perhaps, to die!

Then, while the hour serenely shines, Toss the gay die, and quaff thy wines; But ever, in the genial hour, To Bacchus the libation pour, Lest Death in wrath approach, and cry, Man-taste no more the cup of Joy."

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ODE XVI.

THE POWER OF BEAUTY.

SOME sing of Thebes, and some destroy
In lofty numbers haughty Troy.
I mourn, alas! in plaintive strains,
My own captivity and chains!

No navy, rang'd in proud array,
No foot, no horseman, arm'd to slay,
My peace alarm! Far other foes,

Far other hosts, create my woes:

Strange, dangerous hosts, that ambush'd lie
In every bright love-darting eye!
Snch as destroy, when beauty arms
To conquer, dreadful in its charms!

ODE XX.

TO HIS MITRESS. THE gods o'er mortals prove their sway, And steal them from themselves away: Transform'd by their almighty hands, Sad Niobe an image stands ; And Philomel, up-born on wings Through air, her mournful story sings, Would Heaven, indulgent to my vow, The happy change I wish, allow; The envy'd mirror I would be, That thou might'st always gaze on me; And could my naked heart appear, Thou 'dst see thyself-for thou art there! O! were I made thy folding vest, That thou might'st clasp me to thy breast! Or turn'd into a fount, to lave Thy naked beauties in my wave! Thy bosom-cincture I would grow, To warm those little hills of snow; Thy ointment, in rich fragrant streams To wander o'er thy beauteous limbs ; Thy chain of shining pearl-to deck, And close embrace thy graceful neck: A very sandal I would be

To tread on-if trod on by thee!

'First published in the Gentleman's Magazine; and afterwards inserted in the translations of Anacreon, published by Mr. Fawkes.

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