Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Moore (Illustrated) E-Book

Thomas Moore

• Herausgeber: Delphi Classics
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Delphi Poets Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 6313

Beschreibung

Regarded as Ireland's national bard, Thomas Moore was a poet, satirist, composer, and political propagandist, as well as a close friend of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents Moore’s complete poetical works, with beautiful illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Moore's life and works
* Concise introduction to Moore’s life and poetry
* Excellent formatting of the poems
* Text based on the THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. EDITION, 1895 of Moore's poetry
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the poetry
* Easily locate the poems you want to read
* Includes Moore's prose – including his six volume biography of Lord Byron
* Features a bonus biography - explore Moore's intriguing life
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres

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CONTENTS:

The Life and Poetry of Thomas Moore
BRIEF INTRODUCTION: THOMAS MOORE
COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS MOORE
DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Poems
LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

The Prose
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
THE EPICUREAN
LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE

The Biography
THOMAS MOORE by Richard Garnett

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Leseprobe

Thomas Moore

(1779-1852)

Contents

The Life and Poetry of Thomas Moore

BRIEF INTRODUCTION: THOMAS MOORE

COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS MOORE

DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Poems

LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

The Prose

MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

THE EPICUREAN

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE

The Biography

THOMAS MOORE by Richard Garnett

The Delphi Classics Catalogue

© Delphi Classics 2016

Version 1

Thomas Moore

By Delphi Classics, 2016

COPYRIGHT

Thomas Moore - Delphi Poets Series

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2016.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 208 1

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The Life and Poetry of Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was born at 12 Aungier Street in Dublin, Ireland, over his father’s grocery shop. His father came from the Kerry Gaeltacht and his mother, Anastasia Codd, from Wexford. He had two younger sisters, Kate and Ellen.

The birthplace in Victorian times

BRIEF INTRODUCTION: THOMAS MOORE

By William M. Rossetti

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 28th of May 1780. Both his parents were Roman-Catholics; and he was, as a matter of course, brought up in the same religion, and adhered to it — not perhaps with any extreme zeal — throughout his life. His father was a decent tradesman, a grocer and spirit-retailer — or “spirit-grocer,” as the business is termed in Ireland. Thomas received his schooling from Mr. Samuel Whyte, who had been Sheridan’s first preceptor, a man of more than average literary culture. He encouraged a taste for acting among the boys: and Moore, naturally intelligent and lively, became a favorite with his master, and a leader in the dramatic recreations.

His aptitude for verse appeared at an early age. In 1790 he composed an epilogue to a piece acted at the house of Lady Borrows, in Dublin; and in his fourteenth year he wrote a sonnet to Mr. Whyte, which was published in a Dublin magazine.

Like other Irish Roman-Catholics, galled by the hard and stiff collar of Protestant ascendancy, the parents of Thomas Moore hailed the French Revolution, and the prospects which it seemed to offer of some reflex ameliorations. In 1792 the lad was taken by his father to a dinner in honor of the Revolution; and he was soon launched upon a current of ideas and associations which might have conducted a person of more self-oblivious patriotism to the scaffold on which perished the friend of his opening manhood, Robert Emmet. Trinity College, Dublin, having been opened to Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793, Moore was entered there as a student in the succeeding year. He became more proficient in French and Italian than in the classic languages, and showed no turn for Latin verses. Eventually, his political proclivities, and intimacy with many of the chiefs of opposition, drew down upon him (after various interrogations, in which he honorably refused to implicate his friends) a severe admonition from the University authorities; but he had not joined in any distinctly rebellious act and no more formidable results ensued to him.

In 1793 Moore published in the Anthologia Hibernica two pieces of verse; and his budding talents became so far known as to earn him the proud eminence of Laureate to the Gastronomic Club of Dalkey, near Dublin, in 1794. Through his acquaintance with Emmet, he joined the Oratorical Society, and afterwards the more important Historical Society; and he published An Ode on Nothing, with Notes, by Trismegistus Rustifucius, D. D., which won a party success. About the same time he wrote articles for The Press, a paper founded towards the end of 1797 by O’Connor, Addis, Emmet, and others. He graduated at Trinity College in November, 1799.

The bar was the career which his parents, and especially his mother, wished Thomas to pursue; neither of them had much faith in poetry or literature as a resource for his subsistence. Accordingly, in 1799, he crossed over into England, and studied in the Middle Temple; and he was afterwards called to the bar, but literary pursuits withheld him from practicing. He had brought with him from Ireland his translations from Anacreon; and published these by subscription in 1800, dedicated to the Prince Regent (then the illusory hope of political reformers), with no inconsiderable success. Lord Moira, Lady Donegal, and other leaders of fashionable society, took him up with friendly warmth, and he soon found himself a well-accepted guest in the highest circles in London. No clever young fellow — without any advantage of birth or of person, and with intellectual attractions which seem to posterity to be of a rather middling kind — ever won his way more easily or more cheaply into that paradise of mean ambitions, the beau monde. Moore has not escaped the stigma which attaches to almost all men who thus succeeded under the like conditions — that of tuft-hunting and lowering compliances. He would be a bold man who should affirm that there was absolutely no sort of ground for the charge; or that Moore — fêted at Holland House, and hovered-round by the fashionable of both sexes, the men picking up his witticisms, and the women languishing over his songs — was capable of the same sturdy self-reliance and simple adhesion to principle which might possibly have been in him, and forthcoming from him, under different conditions. Who shall touch pitch and not be defiled, — who treacle, and not be sweetened? At the same time, it is easy to carry charges of this kind too far, and not always through motives the purest and most exalted. It may be said without unfairness on either side that the sort of talents which Moore possessed brought him naturally into the society which he frequented; that very possibly the world has got quite as much out of him by that development of his faculties as by any other which they could have been likely to receive; and that he repaid patronage in the coin of amusement and of bland lenitives, rather than in that of obsequious adulation. For we are not required nor permitted to suppose that there was the stuff of a hero in “little Tom Moore;” or that the lapdog of the drawing-room would under any circumstances have been the wolf-hound of the public sheepfold. In the drawing-room he is a sleeker lapdog, and lies upon more and choicelier-clothed laps than he would in “the two-pair back;” and that is about all that needs to be said or speculated in such a case. As a matter of fact, the demeanor of Moore among the socially great seems to have been that of a man who respected his company, without failing to respect himself also — any ill-natured caviling or ready-made imputations to the contrary notwithstanding.

In 1802 Moore produced his first volume of original verse, the Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little (an allusion to the author’s remarkably small stature), for which he received £60. There are in this volume some erotic improprieties, not of a very serious kind either in intention or in harmfulness, which Moore regretted in later years. Next year Lord Moira procured him the post of Registrar to the Admiralty Court of Bermuda; he embarked on the 25th of September, and reached his destination in January 1804. This work did not suit him much better than the business of the bar; in March he withdrew from personal discharge of the duties: and, leaving a substitute in his place, he made a tour in the United States and Canada. He was presented to Jefferson, and felt impressed by his republican simplicity. Such a quality, however, was not in Moore’s line; and nothing perhaps shows the essential smallness of his nature more clearly than the fact that his visit to the United States, in their giant infancy, produced in him no glow of admiration or aspiration, but only a recrudescence of the commonest prejudices — the itch for picking little holes, the petty joy of reporting them, and the puny self-pluming upon fancied or factitious superiorities. If the washy liberal patriotism of Moore’s very early years had any vitality at all, such as would have qualified it for a harder struggle than jeering at the Holy Alliance, and singing after-dinner songs of national sentimentalism to the applause of Whig lords and ladies, this American experience may beheld to have been its death-blow. He now saw republicans face to face; and found that they were not for him, nor he for them. He returned to England in 1806; and soon afterwards published his Odes and Epistles, comprising many remarks, faithfully expressive of his perceptions, on American society and manners.

The volume was tartly criticised in the Edinburgh Review by Jeffrey, who made some rather severe comments upon the improprieties chargeable to Moore’s early writings. The consequence was a challenge, and what would have been a duel at Chalk Farm, but for unloaded pistols and police interference. This fiasco soon led to an amicable understanding between Moore and Jeffrey; and a few years later, about the end of 1811, to a friendship of closer intimacy between the Irish songster and his great poetic contemporary Lord Byron. His lordship, in his youthful satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, had made fun of the unbloody duel. This Moore resented, not so much as a mere matter of ridicule as because it involved an ignoring or a denial of a counter-statement of the matter put into print by himself. He accordingly wrote a letter to Byron on the 1st of January 1810, calculated to lead to further hostilities. But, as the noble poet had then already for some months left England for his prolonged tour on the Continent, the missive did not reach him; and a little epistolary skirmishing, after his return in the following year, terminated in a hearty reconciliation, and a very intimate cordiality, almost deserving of the lofty name of friendship, on both sides.

Re-settled in London, and re-quartered upon the pleasant places of fashion, Moore was once more a favorite at Holland House, Lansdowne House, and Donington House, the residence of Lord Moira. His lordship obtained a comfortable post to soothe the declining years of Moore’s father, and held out to the poet himself the prospect — which was not however realized — of another snug berth for his own occupancy. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland never received the benefit of the Irish patriot’s services in any public capacity at home — only through the hands of a defaulting deputy in Bermuda: it did, however, at length give him the money without the official money’s-worth, for in 1835, under Lord Melbourne’s ministry, an annual literary pension of £300 was bestowed upon the then elderly poet. Nor can it be said that Moore’s worth to his party, whether we regard him as political sharpshooter or as national lyrist, deserved a less recognition from the Whigs: he had at one time, with creditable independence, refused to be indebted to the Tories for an appointment. Some obloquy has at times been cast upon him on account of his sarcasms against the Prince Regent, which, however well merited on public grounds, have been held to come with an ill grace from the man whose first literary effort, the Anacreon, had been published under the auspices of his Royal Highness as dedicatee, no doubt a practical obligation of some moment to the writer. It does not appear, however, that the obligation went much beyond this simple acceptance of the dedication: Moore himself declared that the Regent’s further civilities had consisted simply in asking him twice to dinner, and admitting him, in 1811, to a fête in honor of the regency.

The life of Moore for several years ensuing is one of literary success and social brilliancy, varied by his marrying in 1811, Miss Bessy Dyke, a lady who made an excellent and devoted wife, and to whom he was very affectionately attached, although the attractions and amenities of the fashionable world caused from time to time considerable inroads upon his domesticity. After a while, he removed from London, with his wife and young family, to Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire — a somewhat lonely site. His Irish Melodies, the work by which he will continue best known, had their origin in 1797, when his attention was drawn to a publication named Bunting’s Irish Melodies, for which he occasionally wrote the words. In 1807 he entered into a definite agreement with Mr. Power on this subject, in combination with Sir J. Stevenson, who undertook to compose the accompaniments. The work was prolonged up to the year 1834; and contributed very materially to Moore’s comfort in money matters and his general prominence — as his own singing of the Melodies in good society kept up his sentimental and patriotic prestige, and his personal lionizing, in a remarkable degree. He played on the piano, and sang with taste, though in a style resembling recitative, and not with any great power of voice: in speaking, his voice had a certain tendency to hoarseness, but its quality became flute-like in singing. In 1811 he made another essay in the musical province; writing, at the request of the manager of the Lyceum Theatre, an operetta named M.P., or the Bluestocking. It was the reverse of a stage-success; and Moore, in collecting his poems, excluded this work, save as regards some of the songs comprised in it. In 1808 had appeared anonymously, the poems of Intolerance and Corruption, followed in 1809 by The Sceptic.Intercepted Letters, or The Twopenny Postbag, by Thomas Brown the Younger, came out in 1812: it was a huge success, and very intelligibly such, going through fourteen editions in one year. In the same year the project of writing an oriental poem — a class of work greatly in vogue now that Byron was inventing Giaours and Corsairs — was seriously entertained by Moore. This project took shape in Lalla Rookh, written chiefly at Mayfield Cottage — a performance for which Mr. Longman the publisher paid the extremely large sum of £3150 in advance: its publication hung over till 1817. The poem has been translated into all sorts of languages, including Persian, and is said to have found many admirers among its oriental readers. Whatever may be thought of its poetic merits — and I for one disclaim any scintilla of enthusiasm — or of its power in vitalizing the disjecta membra of orientalism, the stock-in-trade of the Asiatic curiosity-shop, there is no doubt that Moore worked very conscientiously upon this undertaking: he read up to any extent, — wrote, talked, and perhaps thought, Islamically — and he trips up his reader with some allusion verse after verse, tumbling him to the bottom of the page, with its quagmire of explanatory footnotes. In 1815 appeared the National Airs; in 1816, Sacred Songs, Duets, and Trios, the music composed and selected by Stevenson and Moore; in 1818, The Fudge Family in Paris, again a great hit. This work was composed in Paris, which capital Moore had been visiting in company with his friend Samuel Rogers the poet.

The easily earned money and easily discharged duties of the appointment in Bermuda began now to weigh heavy on Moore. Defalcations of his deputy, to the extent of £6000, were discovered, for which the nominal holder of the post was liable. Moore declined offers of assistance; and, pending a legal decision on the matter, he had found it apposite to revisit the Continent. In France, Lord John (the late Earl) Russell was his travelling companion: they went on together through Switzerland, and parted at Milan. Moore then, on the 8th of October 1819, joined in Venice his friend Byron, who had been absent from England since 1816. The poets met in the best of humor, and on terms of hearty good-fellowship — Moore staying with Byron for five or six days. On taking leave of him, Byron presented the Irish lyrist with the MS. of his autobiographical memoirs stipulating that they should not be published till after the donor’s death: at a later date he became anxious that they should remain wholly unpublished. Moore sold the MS. in 1831 to Murray for £2100, after some negotiations with Longman, and consigned it to the publisher’s hands. In 1824 the news arrived of Byron’s death. Mr. (afterwards Sir Wilmot) Horton on the part of Lady Byron, Mr. Luttrell on that of Moore, Colonel Doyle on that of Mrs. Leigh, Lord Byron’s half-sister, and Mr. Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton) as a friend and executor of the deceased poet, consulted on the subject. Hobhouse was strong in urging the suppression of the Memoirs. The result was that Murray, setting aside considerations of profit, burned the MS. (some principal portions of which nevertheless exist in print, in other forms of publication); and Moore immediately afterwards, also in a disinterested spirit, repaid him the purchase-money of £2100. It was quite fair that Moore should be reimbursed this large sum by some of the persons in whose behoof he had made the sacrifice, this was not neglected.

To resume. Bidding adieu to Byron at Venice, Moore went on to Rome with the sculptor Chantrey and the portrait-painter Jackson. His tour supplied the materials for the Rhymes on the Road, published, as being extracted from the journal of a travelling member of the Pococurante Society, in 1820, along with the Fables for the Holy Alliance. Lawrence, Turner, and Eastlake, were also much with Moore in Rome: and here he made acquaintance with Canova. Hence he returned to Paris, and made that city his home up to 1822, expecting the outcome of the Bermuda affair. He also resided partly at Butte Goaslin, near Sèvres, with a rich and hospitable Spanish family named Villamil. The debt of £6000 was eventually reduced to £750: both the Marquis of Lansdowne and Lord John Russell pressed Moore with their friendly offers, and the advance which he at last accepted was soon repaid out of the profits of the Loves of the Angels — which poem, chiefly written in Paris, was published in 1823. The prose tale of The Epicureanwas composed about the same time, but did not issue from the press till 1827: the Memoirs of Captain Rock in 1824. He had been under an engagement to a bookseller to write a Life of Sheridan. During his stay in France the want of documents withheld him from proceeding with this work: but he ultimately took it up, and brought it out in 1825. It was not availed to give Moore any reputation as a biographer, though the reader in search of amusement will pick out of it something to suit him. George the Fourth is credited with having made a neat bon mot upon this book. Some one having remarked to him that “Moore had been murdering Sheridan,”— “No,” replied his sacred majesty, “but he has certainly attempted his life.” A later biographical performance, published in 1830, and one of more enduring interest to posterity, was the Life of Byron. This is a very fascinating book; but more — which is indeed a matter of course — in virtue of the lavish amount of Byron’s own writing which it embodies than, on account of the Memoir-compiler’s doings. However, there is a considerable share of good feeling in the book, as well as matter of permanent value from the personal knowledge that Moore had of Byron; and the avoidance of “posing” and of dealing with the subject for purposes of effect, in the case of a man whose career and genius lent themselves so insidiously to such a treatment, is highly creditable to the biographer’s good sense and taste. The Life of Byron succeeded, in the list of Moore’s writings, a History of Ireland, contributed in 1827 to Lardner’s Cyclopaedia, and the Travels of an Irishman in Search of a Religion, published in the same year: and was followed by a Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, issued in 1881. This, supplemented by some minor productions, closes the sufficiently long list of writings of an industrious literary life.

In his latter years Moore resided at Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes in Wiltshire, Where he was near the refined social circle of Lord Lansdowne at Bowood, as well as the lettered home of the Rev. Mr. Bowles at Bremhill. Domestic sorrows clouded his otherwise cheerful and comfortable retirement. One of his sons died in the French military service in Algeria; another of consumption in 1842. For some years before his own death, which occurred on the 25th of February 1853, his mental powers had collapsed. He sleeps in Bromham Cemetery, in the neighborhood of Sloperton.

Moore had a very fair share of learning, as well as steady application, greatly as he sacrificed to the graces of life, and especially of “good society.” His face was not perhaps much more impressive in its contour than his diminutive figure. His eyes, however, were dark and fine; his forehead bony, and with what a phrenologist would recognize as large bumps of wit; the mouth pleasingly dimpled. His manner and talk were bright, abounding rather in lively anecdote and point than in wit and humor, strictly so called. To term him amiable according to any standard, and estimable too as men of an unheroic fibre go, is no more than his due.

No doubt the world has already seen the most brilliant days of Moore’s poetry. Its fascinations are manifestly of the more temporary sort: partly through fleetingness of subject-matter and evanescence of allusion (as in the clever and still readable satirical poems); partly through the aroma of sentimental patriotism, hardly strong enough in stamina to make the compositions national, or to maintain their high level of popularity after the lyrist himself has long been at rest; partly through the essentially commonplace sources and forms of inspiration which belong to his more elaborate and ambitious works. No poetical reader of the present day is the poorer for knowing absolutely nothing of Lalla Rookh or the Loves of the Angels. What then will be the hold or the claim of these writings upon a reader of the twenty-first century? If we expect the satirical compositions, choice in a different way, the best things of Moore are to be sought in the Irish Melodies, to which a considerable share of merit, and of apposite merit, is not to be denied: yet even here what deserts around the oases, and the oases themselves how soon exhaustible and forgettable! There are but few thoroughly beautiful and touching lines in the whole of Moore’s poetry. Here is one —

“Come rest in this bosom, mine own stricken deer.”

A great deal has been said upon the overpowering “lusciousness” of his poetry, and the magical “melody” of his verse: most of this is futile. There is in the former as much of fadeur as of lusciousness; and a certain tripping or trotting exactitude, not less fully reducible to the test of scansion than of a well-attuned ear, is but a rudimentary form of melody — while of harmony or rhythmic volume of sound Moore is as decisively destitute as any correct versifier can well be. No clearer proof of the incapacity of the mass of critics and readers to appreciate the calibre of poetical work in point of musical and general execution could be given than the fact that Moore has always with them passed, and still passes, for an eminently melodious poet. What then remains? Chiefly this. In one class of writing, liveliness of witty banter, along with neatness; and, in the other and ostensibly more permanent class, elegance, also along with neatness. Reduce these qualities to one denomination, and we come to something that may be called “Propriety”: a sufficiently disastrous “raw material” for the purposes of a poet, and by no means loftily to be praised or admired even when regarded as the outer investiture of a nobler poetic something within. But let desert of every kind have its place, and welcome. In the cosmical diapason and august orchestra of poetry, Tom Moore’s little Pan’s-pipe can at odd moments be heard, and interjects an appreciable and rightly-combined twiddle or two. To be gratified with these at the instant is no more than the instrument justifies, and the executant claims: to think much about them when the organ is pealing or the violin plaining (with a Shelley performing on the first, or a Mrs. Browning on the second), or to be on the watch for their recurrences, would be equally superfluous and weak-minded.

The soldier and politician Lord Moira was a major early patron of Moore. For many years Moore hoped his connection with him would lead to public office, though he was ultimately disappointed.

Lord Jeffrey whom Moore nearly fought in a duel in 1806 following a bad review of his work

An etching of Moore as a young man

Thomas Moore, after a painting by Thomas Lawrence

COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS MOORE

Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. EDITION, 1895

CONTENTS

ODES OF ANACREON

SONGS FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY.

JUVENILE POEMS.

POEMS RELATING TO AMERICA

ODES TO NEA; WRITTEN AT BERMUDA.

IRISH MELODIES

NATIONAL AIRS

SACRED SONGS

A MELOLOGUE UPON NATIONAL MUSIC.

SET OF GLEES, MUSIC BY MOORE.

LEGENDARY BALLADS.

BALLADS, SONGS, ETC.

UNPUBLISHED SONGS.

A SELECTION FROM THE SONGS IN M. P.; OR, THE BLUE-STOCKING

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

POEMS FROM THE EPICUREAN

THE SUMMER FÊTE.

EVENINGS IN GREECE

ALCIPHRON: A FRAGMENT.

LALLA ROOKH

THE LOVES OF THE ANGELS.

RHYMES ON THE ROAD.

CORRUPTION, AND INTOLERANCE.

THE SCEPTIC, A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE.

TWOPENNY POST-BAG, BY THOMAS BROWN, THE YOUNGER.

INTERCEPTED LETTERS, ETC.

SATIRICAL AND HUMOROUS POEMS.

POLITICAL AND SATIRICAL POEMS.

FABLES FOR THE HOLY ALLIANCE.

THE FUDGE FAMILY IN PARIS.

THE FUDGES IN ENGLAND

Detailed Table of Contents

ODES OF ANACREON

(1800).

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE.

WITH NOTES.

TO

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE PRINCE OF WALES.

SIR, — In allowing me to dedicate this Work to Your Royal Highness, you have conferred upon me an honor which I feel very sensibly: and I have only to regret that the pages which you have thus distinguished are not more deserving of such illustrious patronage.

Believe me, SIR,With every sentiment of respect,Your Royal Highness’sVery grateful and devoted Servant,

THOMAS MOORE.

REMARKS ON ANACREON

There is but little known, with certainty of the life of Anacreon. Chamaeleon Heracleotes, who wrote upon the subject, has been lost in the general wreck of ancient literature. The editors of the poet have collected the few trifling anecdotes which are scattered through the extant authors of antiquity, and, supplying the deficiency of materials by fictions of their own imagination, have arranged what they call a life of Anacreon. These specious fabrications are intended to indulge that interest which we naturally feel in the biography of illustrious men; but it is rather a dangerous kind of illusion, as it confounds the limits of history and romance, and is too often supported by unfaithful citation.

Our poet was born in the city of Teos, in the delicious region of Ionia, and the time of his birth appears to have been in the sixth century before Christ. He flourished at that remarkable period when, under the polished tyrants Hipparchus and Polycrates, Athens and Samos were become the rival asylums of genius. There is nothing certain known about his family; and those who pretend to discover in Plato that he was a descendant of the monarch Codrus, show much more of zeal than of either accuracy or judgment.

The disposition and talents of Anacreon recommended him to the monarch of Samos, and he was formed to be the friend of such a prince as Polycrates. Susceptible only to the pleasures, he felt not the corruptions, of the court; and while Pythagoras fled from the tyrant, Anacreon was celebrating his praises oh the lyre. We are told, too, by Maximus Tyrius, that, by the influence of his amatory songs, he softened the mind of Polycrates into a spirit of benevolence towards his subjects.

The amours of the poet, and the rivalship of the tyrant, I shall pass over in silence; and there are few, I presume, who will regret the omission of most of those anecdotes, which the industry of some editors has not only promulged, but discussed. Whatever is repugnant to modesty and virtue is considered, in ethical science, by a supposition very favorable to humanity, as impossible; and this amiable persuasion should be much more strongly entertained where the transgression wars with nature as well as virtue. But why are we not allowed to indulge in the presumption? Why are we officiously reminded that there have been really such instances of depravity?

Hipparchus, who now maintained at Athens the power which his father Pisistratus had usurped, was one of those princes who may be said to have polished the fetters of their subjects. He was the first, according to Plato, who edited the poems of Homer, and commanded them to be sung by the rhapsodists at the celebration of the Panathenaea. From his court, which was a sort of galaxy of genius, Anacreon could not long be absent. Hipparchus sent a barge for him; the poet readily embraced the invitation, and the Muses and the Loves were wafted with him to Athens.

The manner of Anacreon’s death was singular. We are told that in the eighty-fifth year of his age he was choked by a grape-stone; and however we may smile at their enthusiastic partiality who see in this easy and characteristic death a peculiar indulgence of Heaven, we cannot help admiring that his fate should have been so emblematic of his disposition. Caelius Calcagninus alludes to this catastrophe in the following epitaph on our poet: —

 Those lips, then, hallowed sage, which poured along  A music sweet as any cygnet’s song,    The grape hath closed for ever!  Here let the ivy kiss the poet’s tomb,  Here let the rose he loved with laurels bloom,    In bands that ne’er shall sever.  But far be thou, oh! far, unholy vine,  By whom the favorite minstrel of the Nine    Lost his sweet vital breath;  Thy God himself now blushes to confess,  Once hallowed vine! he feels he loves thee less,    Since poor Anacreon’s death.

It has been supposed by some writers that Anacreon and Sappho were contemporaries; and the very thought of an intercourse between persons so congenial, both in warmth of passion and delicacy of genius, gives such play to the imagination that the mind loves to indulge in it. But the vision dissolves before historical truth; and Chamaeleon, and Hermesianax, who are the source of the supposition, are considered as having merely indulged in a poetical anachronism.

To infer the moral dispositions of a poet from the tone of sentiment which pervades his works, is sometimes a very fallacious analogy; but the soul of Anacreon speaks so unequivocally through his odes, that we may safely consult them as the faithful mirrors of his heart. We find him there the elegant voluptuary, diffusing the seductive charm of sentiment over passions and propensities at which rigid morality must frown. His heart, devoted to indolence, seems to have thought that there is wealth enough in happiness, but seldom happiness in mere wealth. The cheerfulness, indeed, with which he brightens his old age is interesting and endearing; like his own rose, he is fragrant even in decay. But the most peculiar feature of his mind is that love of simplicity, which be attributes to himself so feelingly, and which breathes characteristically throughout all that he has sung. In truth, if we omit those few vices in our estimate which religion, at that time, not only connived at, but consecrated, we shall be inclined to say that the disposition of our poet was amiable; that his morality was relaxed, but not abandoned; and that Virtue, with her zone loosened, may be an apt emblem of the character of Anacreon.

Of his person and physiognomy, time has preserved such uncertain memorials, that it were better, perhaps, to leave the pencil to fancy; and few can read the Odes of Anacreon without imaging to themselves the form of the animated old bard, crowned with roses, and singing cheerfully to his lyre.

After the very enthusiastic eulogiums bestowed both by ancients and moderns upon the poems of Anacreon, we need not be diffident in expressing our raptures at their beauty, nor hesitate to pronounce them the most polished remains of antiquity. They are indeed, all beauty, all enchantment. He steals us so insensibly along with him, that we sympathize even in his excesses. In his amatory odes there is a delicacy of compliment not to be found in any other ancient poet. Love at that period was rather an unrefined emotion; and the intercourse of the sexes was animated more by passion than by sentiment. They knew not those little tendernesses which form the spiritual part of affection; their expression of feeling was therefore rude and unvaried, and the poetry of love deprived it of its most captivating graces. Anacreon, however, attained some ideas of this purer gallantry; and the same delicacy of mind which led him to this refinement, prevented him also from yielding to the freedom of language which has sullied the pages of all the other poets. His descriptions are warm; but the warmth is in the ideas, not the words. He is sportive without being wanton, and ardent without being licentious. His poetic invention is always most brilliantly displayed in those allegorical fictions which so many have endeavored to imitate, though all have confessed them to be inimitable. Simplicity is the distinguishing feature of these odes, and they interest by their innocence, as much as they fascinate by their beauty. They may be said, indeed, to be the very infants of the Muses, and to lisp in numbers.

I shall not be accused of enthusiastic partiality by those who have read and felt the original; but to others, I am conscious, this should not be the language of a translator, whose faint reflection of such beauties can but ill justify his admiration of them.

In the age of Anacreon music and poetry were inseparable. These kindred talents were for a long time associated, and the poet always sung his own compositions to the lyre. It is probable that they were not set to any regular air, but rather a kind of musical recitation, which was varied according to the fancy and feelings of the moment. The poems of Anacreon were sung at banquets as late as the time of Aulus Gellius, who tells us that he heard one of the odes performed at a birthday entertainment.

The singular beauty of our poet’s style and the apparent facility, perhaps, of his metre have attracted, as I have already remarked, a crowd of imitators. Some of these have succeeded with wonderful felicity, as may be discerned in the few odes which are attributed to writers of a later period. But none of his emulators have been half so dangerous to his fame as those Greek ecclesiastics of the early ages, who, being conscious of their own inferiority to their great prototypes, determined on removing all possibility of comparison, and, under a semblance of moral zeal, deprived the world of some of the most exquisite treasures of ancient times. The works of Sappho and Alcaeus were among those flowers of Grecian literature which thus fell beneath the rude hand of ecclesiastical presumption. It is true they pretended that this sacrifice of genius was hallowed by the interests of religion, but I have already assigned the most probable motive; and if Gregorius Nazianzenus had not written Anacreontics, we might now perhaps have the works of the Teian unmutilated, and be empowered to say exultingly with Horace,

Nec si quid olim lusit Anacreon delevit aetas.

The zeal by which these bishops professed to be actuated gave birth more innocently, indeed, to an absurd species of parody, as repugnant to piety as it is to taste, where the poet of voluptuousness was made a preacher of the gospel, and his muse, like the Venus in armor at Lacedaemon, was arrayed in all the severities of priestly instruction. Such was the “Anacreon Recantatus,” by Carolus de Aquino, a Jesuit, published 1701, which consisted of a series of palinodes to the several songs of our poet. Such, too, was the Christian Anacreon of Patrignanus, another Jesuit, who preposterously transferred to a most sacred subject all that the Graecian poet had dedicated to festivity and love.

His metre has frequently been adopted by the modern Latin poets; and Scaliger, Taubman, Barthius, and others, have shown that it is by no means uncongenial with that language. The Anacreontics of Scaliger, however, scarcely deserve the name; as they glitter all over with conceits, and, though often elegant, are always labored. The beautiful fictions of Angerianus preserve more happily than any others the delicate turn of those allegorical fables, which, passing so frequently through the mediums of version and imitation, have generally lost their finest rays in the transmission. Many of the Italian poets have indulged their fancies upon the subjects; and in the manner of Anacreon, Bernardo Tasso first introduced the metre, which was afterwards polished and enriched by Chabriera and others.

ODE I.1

I saw the smiling bard of pleasure,The minstrel of the Teian measure;’Twas in a vision of the night,He beamed upon my wondering sight.I heard his voice, and warmly prestThe dear enthusiast to my breast.His tresses wore a silvery dye,But beauty sparkled in his eye;Sparkled in his eyes of fire,Through the mist of soft desire.His lip exhaled, when’er he sighed,The fragrance of the racy tide;And, as with weak and reeling feetHe came my cordial kiss to meet,An infant, of the Cyprian band,Guided him on with tender hand.Quick from his glowing brows he drewHis braid, of many a wanton hue;I took the wreath, whose inmost twineBreathed of him and blushed with wine.I hung it o’er my thoughtless brow,And ah! I feel its magic now:I feel that even his garland’s touchCan make the bosom love too much.

1 This ode is the first of the series in the Vatican manuscript, which attributes it to no other poet than Anacreon. They who assert that the manuscript imputes it to Basilius, have been mislead. Whether it be the production of Anacreon or not, it has all the features of ancient simplicity, and is a beautiful imitation of the poet’s happiest manner.

ODE II.

Give me the harp of epic song,Which Homer’s finger thrilled along;But tear away the sanguine string,For war is not the theme I sing.Proclaim the laws of festal right,1I’m monarch of the board to-night;And all around shall brim as high,And quaff the tide as deep as I.And when the cluster’s mellowing dewsTheir warm enchanting balm infuse,Our feet shall catch the elastic bound,And reel us through the dance’s round.Great Bacchus! we shall sing to thee,In wild but sweet ebriety;Flashing around such sparks of thought,As Bacchus could alone have taught.

Then, give the harp of epic song,Which Homer’s finger thrilled along;But tear away the sanguine string,For war is not the theme I sing.

1 The ancients prescribed certain laws of drinking at their festivals, for an account of which see the commentators. Anacreon here acts the symposiarch, or master of the festival.

ODE III.1

Listen to the Muse’s lyre,Master of the pencil’s fire!Sketched in painting’s bold display,Many a city first portray;Many a city, revelling free,Full of loose festivity.Picture then a rosy train,Bacchants straying o’er the plain;Piping, as they roam along,Roundelay or shepherd-song.Paint me next, if painting maySuch a theme as this portray,All the earthly heaven of loveThese delighted mortals prove.

1 La Fosse has thought proper to lengthen this poem by considerable interpolations of his own, which he thinks are indispensably necessary to the completion of the description.

ODE IV.1

Vulcan! hear your glorious task;I did not from your labors askIn gorgeous panoply to shine,For war was ne’er a sport of mine.No — let me have a silver bowl,Where I may cradle all my soul;But mind that, o’er its simple frameNo mimic constellations flame;Nor grave upon the swelling side,Orion, scowling o’er the tide.

I care not for the glittering wain,Nor yet the weeping sister train.But let the vine luxuriant rollIts blushing tendrils round the bowl,While many a rose-lipped bacchant maidIs culling clusters in their shade.Let sylvan gods, in antic shapes,Wildly press the gushing grapes,And flights of Loves, in wanton play,Wing through the air their winding way;While Venus, from her arbor green,Looks laughing at the joyous scene,And young Lyaeus by her sideSits, worthy of so bright a bride.

1 This ode, Aulus Gellius tells us, was performed at an entertainment where he was present.

ODE V.

Sculptor, wouldst thou glad my soul,Grave for me an ample bowl,Worthy to shine in hall or bower,When spring-time brings the reveller’s hour.Grave it with themes of chaste design,Fit for a simple board like mine.Display not there the barbarous ritesIn which religious zeal delights;Nor any tale of tragic fateWhich History shudders to relate.No — cull thy fancies from above,Themes of heaven and themes of love.Let Bacchus, Jove’s ambrosial boy,Distil the grape in drops of joy,And while he smiles at every tear,Let warm-eyed Venus, dancing near,With spirits of the genial bed,The dewy herbage deftly tread.Let Love be there, without his arms,In timid nakedness of charms;And all the Graces, linked with Love,Stray, laughing, through the shadowy grove;While rosy boys disporting round,In circlets trip the velvet ground.But ah! if there Apollo toys,1I tremble for the rosy boys.

1 An allusion to the fable that Apollo had killed his beloved boy Hyacinth, while playing with him at quoits. “This” (says M. La Fosse) “is assuredly the sense of the text, and it cannot admit of any other.”

ODE VI.1

As late I sought the spangled bowers,To cull a wreath of matin flowers,Where many an early rose was weeping,I found the urchin Cupid sleeping,I caught the boy, a goblet’s tideWas richly mantling by my side,I caught him by his downy wing,And whelmed him in the racy spring.Then drank I down the poisoned bowl,And love now nestles in my soul.Oh, yes, my soul is Cupid’s nest,I feel him fluttering in my breast.

1 This beautiful fiction, which the commentators have attributed to Julian, a royal poet, the Vatican MS. pronounces to be the genuine offspring of Anacreon.

ODE VII.

The women tell me every dayThat all my bloom has pas past away.“Behold,” the pretty wantons cry,“Behold this mirror with a sigh;The locks upon thy brow are few,And like the rest, they’re withering too!”Whether decline has thinned my hair,I’m sure I neither know nor care;But this I know, and this I feelAs onward to the tomb I steal,That still as death approaches nearer,The joys of life are sweeter, dearer;And had I but an hour to live,That little hour to bliss I’d give.

ODE VIII.1

I care not for the idle stateOf Persia’s king, the rich, the great.I envy not the monarch’s throne,Nor wish the treasured gold my ownBut oh! be mine the rosy wreath,Its freshness o’er my brow to breathe;Be mine the rich perfumes that flow,To cool and scent my locks of snow.To-day I’ll haste to quaff my wineAs if to-morrow ne’er would shine;But if to-morrow comes, why then — I’ll haste to quaff my wine again.And thus while all our days are bright,Nor time has dimmed their bloomy light,Let us the festal hours beguileWith mantling pup and cordial smile;And shed from each new bowl of wine,The richest drop on Bacchus’ shrineFor death may come, with brow unpleasant,May come, when least we wish him present,And beckon to the Sable shore,And grimly bid us — drink no more!

1 Baxter conjectures that this was written upon the occasion of our poet’s returning the money to Polycrates, according to the anecdote in Stobaeus.

ODE IX.

I pray thee, by the gods above,Give me the mighty bowl I love,And let me sing, in wild delight,“I will — I will be mad to-night!”Alcmaeon once, as legends tell,Was frenzied by the fiends of hell;Orestes, too, with naked tread,Frantic paced the mountain-head;And why? a murdered mother’s shadeHaunted them still where’er they strayed.But ne’er could I a murderer be,The grape alone shall bleed for me;Yet can I shout, with wild delight,“I will — I will be mad to-night.”

Alcides’ self, in days of yore,Imbrued his hands in youthful gore,And brandished, with a maniac joy,The quiver of the expiring boy:And Ajax, with tremendous shield,Infuriate scoured the guiltless field.But I, whose hands no weapon ask,No armor but this joyous flask;The trophy of whose frantic hoursIs but a scattered wreath of flowers,Ev’n I can sing, with wild delight,“I will — I will be mad to-night!”

ODE X.1

How am I to punish thee,For the wrong thou’st done to meSilly swallow, prating thing — Shall I clip that wheeling wing?Or, as Tereus did, of old,2(So the fabled tale is told,)Shall I tear that tongue away,Tongue that uttered such a lay?Ah, how thoughtless hast thou been!Long before the dawn was seen,When a dream came o’er my mind,Picturing her I worship, kind,Just when I was nearly blest,Loud thy matins broke my rest!

1 This ode is addressed to a swallow.

2 Modern poetry has conferred the name of Philomel upon the nightingale; but many respectable authorities among the ancients assigned this metamorphose to Progne, and made Philomel the swallow, as Anacreon does here.

ODE XI.1

“Tell me, gentle youth, I pray thee,What in purchase shall I pay theeFor this little waxen toy,Image of the Paphian boy?”Thus I said, the other day,To a youth who past my way:“Sir,” (he answered, and the whileAnswered all in Doric style,)“Take it, for a trifle take it;’Twas not I who dared to make it;No, believe me, ’twas not I;Oh, it has cost me many a sigh,And I can no longer keepLittle Gods, who murder sleep!”“Here, then, here,” (I said with joy,)“Here is silver for the boy:He shall be my bosom guest,Idol of my pious breast!”

Now, young Love, I have thee mine,Warm me with that torch of thine;Make me feel as I have felt,Or thy waxen frame shall melt:I must burn with warm desire,Or thou, my boy — in yonder fire.2

1 It is difficult to preserve with any grace the narrative simplicity of this ode, and the humor of the turn with which it concludes. I feel, indeed, that the translation must appear vapid, if not ludicrous, to an English reader.

2 From this Longepierre conjectures, that, whatever Anacreon might say, he felt sometimes the inconveniences of old age, and here solicits from the power of Love a warmth which he could no longer expect from Nature.

ODE XII.

They tell how Atys, wild with love,Roams the mount and haunted grove;1Cvbele’s name he howls around,The gloomy blast returns the sound!Oft too, by Claros’ hallowed spring,2The votaries of the laurelled kingQuaff the inspiring, magic stream,And rave in wild, prophetic dream.But frenzied dreams are not for me,Great Bacchus is my deity!Full of mirth, and full of him,While floating odors round me swim,While mantling bowls are full supplied,And you sit blushing by my side,I will be mad and raving too — Mad, my girl, with love for you!

1 There are many contradictory stories of the loves of Cybele and Atys. It is certain that he was mutilated, but whether by his own fury, or Cybele’s jealousy, is a point upon which authors are not agreed.

2 This fountain was in a grove, consecrated to Apollo, and situated between Colophon and Lebedos, in Ionia. The god had an oracle there.

ODE XIII.

I will, I will, the conflict’s past,And I’ll consent to love at last.Cupid has long, with smiling art,Invited me to yield my heart;And I have thought that peace of mindShould not be for a smile resigned;And so repelled the tender lure,And hoped my heart would sleep secure.

But, slighted in his boasted charms,The angry infant flew to arms;He slung his quiver’s golden frame,He took his bow; his shafts of flame,And proudly summoned me to yield,Or meet him on the martial field.And what did I unthinking do?I took to arms, undaunted, too;Assumed the corslet, shield, and spear,And, like Pelides, smiled at fear.

Then (hear it, All ye powers above!)I fought with Love! I fought with Love!And now his arrows all were shed,And I had just in terror fled — When, heaving an indignant sigh,To see me thus unwounded fly,And, having now no other dart,He shot himself into my heart!1My heart — alas the luckless day!Received the God, and died away.Farewell, farewell, my faithless shield!Thy lord at length is forced to yield.Vain, vain, is every outward care,The foe’s within, and triumphs there.

1 Dryden has parodied this thought in the following extravagant lines: —  —— I’m all o’er Love;  Nay, I am Love, Love shot, and shot so fast,  He shot himself into my breast at last.

ODE XIV.1

Count me, on the summer trees,Every leaf that courts the breeze;Count me, on the foamy deep,Every wave that sinks to sleep;Then, when you have numbered theseBillowy tides and leafy trees,Count me all the flames I prove,All the gentle nymphs I love.First, of pure Athenian maidsSporting in their olive shades,You may reckon just a score,Nay, I’ll grant you fifteen more.In the famed Corinthian grove,Where such countless wantons rove,2Chains of beauties may be found,Chains, by which my heart is bound;There, indeed, are nymphs divine,Dangerous to a soul like mine.Many bloom in Lesbos’ isle;Many in Ionia smile;Rhodes a pretty swarm can boast;Caria too contains a host.Sum them all — of brown and fairYou may count two thousand there.What, you stare? I pray you peace!More I’ll find before I cease.Have I told you all my flames,‘Mong the amorous Syrian dames?Have I numbered every one,Glowing under Egypt’s sun?Or the nymphs, who blushing sweetDeck the shrine of Love in Crete;Where the God, with festal play,Holds eternal holiday?Still in clusters, still remainGades’ warm, desiring train:3Still there lies a myriad moreOn the sable India’s shore;These, and many far removed,All are loving — all are loved!

1 The poet, in this catalogue of his mistresses, means nothing more, than, by a lively hyperbole, to inform us, that his heart, unfettered by any one object, was warm with devotion towards the sex in general. Cowley is indebted to this ode for the hint of his ballad, called “The Chronicle.”

2 Corinth was very famous for the beauty and number of its courtesans. Venus was the deity principally worshipped by the people, and their constant prayer was, that the gods should increase the number of her worshippers.

3 The music of the Gaditanian females had all the voluptuous character of their dancing, as appears from Martial.

ODE XV.1

Tell me, why, my sweetest dove,Thus your humid pinions move,Shedding through the air in showersEssence of the balmiest flowers?Tell me whither, whence you rove,Tell me all, my sweetest dove.

Curious stranger, I belongTo the bard of Teian song;With his mandate now I flyTo the nymph of azure eye; — She, whose eye has maddened many,But the poet more than any,Venus, for a hymn of love,Warbled in her votive grove,2(’Twas, in sooth a gentle lay,)Gave me to the bard away.See me now his faithful minion, — Thus with softly-gliding pinion,To his lovely girl I bearSongs of passion through the air.Oft he blandly whispers me,“Soon, my bird, I’ll set you free.”But in vain he’ll bid me fly,I shall serve him till I die.Never could my plumes sustainRuffling winds and chilling rain,O’er the plains, or in the dell,On the mountain’s savage swell,Seeking in the desert woodGloomy shelter, rustic food.Now I lead a life of ease,Far from rugged haunts like these.From Anacreon’s hand I eatFood delicious, viands sweet;Flutter o’er his goblet’s brim,Sip the foamy wine with him.Then, when I have wantoned roundTo his lyre’s beguiling sound;Or with gently moving-wingsFanned the minstrel while he sings;On his harp I sink in slumbers,Dreaming still of dulcet numbers!

This is all — away — away — You have made me waste the day.How I’ve chattered! prating crowNever yet did chatter so.

1 The dove of Anacreon, bearing a letter from the poet to his mistress, is met by a stranger, with whom this dialogue, is imagined.

2 “This passage is invaluable, and I do not think that anything so beautiful or so delicate has ever been said. What an idea does it give of the poetry of the man, from whom Venus herself, the mother of the Graces and the Pleasures, purchases a little hymn with one of her favorite doves!” — LONGEPIERRE.

ODE XVI.1

Thou, whose soft and rosy huesMimic form and soul infuse,Best of painters, come portrayThe lovely maid that’s far away.Far away, my soul! thou art,But I’ve thy beauties all by heart.Paint her jetty ringlets playing,Silky locks, like tendrils straying;2And, if painting hath the skillTo make the spicy balm distil,Let every little lock exhaleA sigh of perfume on the gale.Where her tresses’ curly flowDarkles o’er the brow of snow,Let her forehead beam to light,Burnished as the ivory bright.Let her eyebrows smoothly riseIn jetty arches o’er her eyes,Each, a crescent gently gliding,Just commingling, just dividing.

But, hast thou any sparkles warm,The lightning of her eyes to form?Let them effuse the azure rays,That in Minerva’s glances blaze,Mixt with the liquid light that liesIn Cytherea’s languid eyes.O’er her nose and cheek be shedFlushing white and softened red;Mingling tints, as when there glowsIn snowy milk the bashful rose.Then her lip, so rich in blisses,Sweet petitioner for kisses,Rosy nest, where lurks Persuasion,Mutely courting Love’s invasion.Next, beneath the velvet chin,Whose dimple hides a Love within,Mould her neck with grace descending,In a heaven of beauty ending;While countless charms, above, below,Sport and flutter round its snow.Now let a floating, lucid veil,Shadow her form, but not conceal;3A charm may peep, a hue may beamAnd leave the rest to Fancy’s dream.Enough— ’tis she! ’tis all I seek;It glows, it lives, it soon will speak!

1 This ode and the next may be called companion-pictures; they are highly finished, and give us an excellent idea of the taste of the ancients in beauty.

2 The ancients have been very enthusiastic in their praises of the beauty of hair. Apuleius, in the second book of his Milesiacs, says that Venus herself, if she were bald, though surrounded by the Graces and the Loves, could not be pleasing even to her husband Vulcan.

3 This delicate art of description, which leaves imagination to complete the picture, has been seldom adopted in the imitations of this beautiful poem. Ronsard is exceptionally minute; and Politianus, in his charming portrait of a girl, full of rich and exquisite diction, has lifted the veil rather too much. The “questa che tu m’intendi” should be always left to fancy.

ODE XVII.

And now with all thy pencil’s truth,Portray Bathyllus, lovely youth!Let his hair, in masses bright,Fall like floating rays of light;And there the raven’s die confuseWith the golden sunbeam’s hues.Let no wreath, with artful twine.The flowing of his locks confine;But leave them loose to every breeze,To take what shape and course they please.Beneath the forehead, fair as snow,But flushed with manhood’s early glow,And guileless as the dews of dawn,Let the majestic brows be drawn,Of ebon hue, enriched by gold,Such as dark, shining snakes unfold.Mix in his eyes the power alike,With love to win, with awe to strike;Borrow from Mars his look of ire,From Venus her soft glance of fire;Blend them in such expression here,That we by turns may hope and fear!

Now from the sunny apple seekThe velvet down that spreads his cheek;And there, if art so far can go,The ingenuous blush of boyhood show.While, for his mouth — but no, — in vainWould words its witching charm explain.Make it the very seat, the throne,That Eloquence would claim her own;And let the lips, though silent, wearA life-look, as if words were there.

Next thou his ivory neck must trace,Moulded with soft but manly grace;Fair as the neck of Paphia’s boy,Where Paphia’s arms have hung in joy.Give him the wingèd Hermes’ hand,With which he waves his snaky wand;Let Bacchus the broad chest supply,And Leda’s son the sinewy thigh;While, through his whole transparent frame,Thou show’st the stirrings of that flame,Which kindles, when the first love-sighSteals from the heart, unconscious why.

But sure thy pencil, though so bright,Is envious of the eye’s delight,Or its enamoured touch would showThe shoulder, fair as sunless snow,Which now in veiling shadow lies,Removed from all but Fancy’s eyes.