Gay Venus hates this cold disdain Cease then its rigours to maintain, Lest the strain'd cord, with which you bind In rapid whirl recede! Born of a jocund Tuscan sire, Did he transmit his ardent fire, His beauteous daughter still should prove With frozen heart and mien ? If nor blue cheek of shivering swain, Your smile, and soft'ning brow; If weak e'en Jealousy should prove Yet pity these my pains, O Nymph, than oaks more hard, and fierce As snakes, that Afric's thickets pierce, Those terrors of the plains! When heavy falls the pattering shower, Not always shall wild Love command Beneath your dropping shed. TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BLANDUSIA.* BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE THIRTEENTH. NYMPH of the stream, whose source perpetual pours He, while his brows the primal antlers swell, Conscious of strength, and gay of heart, prepares To meet the female, and the foe repel.— In vain he wishes, and in vain he dares! His ardent blood thy pebbly bed shall stain, * It was common with the Antients to consecrate fountains by a sacrifice, and vinous libations, poured from goblets crowned with flowers. Lively imaginations glow over the idea of such a beautiful ceremony. In vain shall Sirius shake his fiery hairs O'er thy pure flood, with waving poplars veil'd, For thou, when most his sultry influence glares, Refreshing shade, and cooling draughts shalt yield To all the flocks, that thro' the valley stray, And to the wearied steers, unyok'd at closing day. Now dear to Fame, sweet fountain, shalt thou flow, Since to my lyre those breathing shades I sing That crown the hollow rock's incumbent brow, From which thy soft loquacious waters spring. To vie with streams Aonian be thy pride, As thro' Blandusia's Vale thy silver currents glide! ΤΟ TELEPHUS.* BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE NINETEENTH. THE number of the vanish'd years That mark each famous Grecian reign, At the feast, held in honour of Licinius Murena having been chosen Augur, Horace endeavours to turn the conversation towards gayer subjects than Grecian Chronology, and the Trojan war, upon which his friend Telephus had been declaiming; and for this purpose seems to have composed the ensuing Ode at table. It concludes with a hint, that the unpleasant state of the poet's mind, respecting his then mistress, incapacitates him for abstracted themes, which demand a serene and collected attention, alike inconsistent with the amorous discontent of the secret heart, and with the temporary exhilaration of the spirits, produced by the occasion on which they were met. This must surely be the meaning of Horace in this Ode, however obscurely expressed. People of sense do not, even in their gayest conversation, start from their subject to ane |