Verses on several subjects (1802) | ||
THE LAST ELEGY OF THE THIRD BOOK OF TIBULLUS.
A good translation of the Love Elegies of Tibullus has been long a desideratum in English literature. That by Dr. Granger is so ill done, that one would hardly conceive it the work of the same pen which produced the Ode to Solitude.
Hammond's Elegies can by no means be considered as imitations of Tibullus, but as fragments of the best possible specimen of translation; and if
The following elegy has always struck me as peculiarly beautiful, exhibiting the vain attempts of a lover to get rid of his passion by the aid of wine, and which Dr. Granger has entirely lost by making it a dialogue between the lover and one of his jolly companions: he also adds, that the contest ends in the triumph of wine over love; but I think he who runs may read the very reverse in every line; even in the two last lines the poet upbraids himself for his absence of mind, and his neglect of the accustomed ceremony of the banquet.
Be with the mystic vine the ivy wove;
Come, kindly come, and heal thy suppliant's woe:
Oft sinks beneath thy arm the power of love.
Pour the Falernian juice with liberal hand;
Fly hence ye heart-felt cares, ye sorrows fly,
Fly by the Delian god's white pinions fann'd.
Nor fear to follow where I lead the way;
If any scorn the jovial strife of wine,
Still may his hopes some treacherous nymph betray!
To savage souls can gentle thoughts impart;
The Libyan pard and yellow lion tames,
And bows to beauty's sway the stubborn heart.
We ask—ah! whom can empty bowls delight?
Just is the god to those who grace his shrine
With the full goblet in the festal rite.
His glowing ire; swift let the vintage flow:
How fierce his anger, and how dire his rage,
The bleeding spoils of mad Agave show.
My perjur'd fair, alone his vengeance find:
What have I wish'd? ah! may the frantic prayer
Be scatter'd wide before the driving wind!
May bliss and smiling fortune wait on thee;
While social joys my banish'd peace restore,
And years of storm one tranquil moment see.
'Tis hard to trifle with an aching breast;
Ill sits on sorrow's lip the labour'd smile,
Ill sounds to pensive ears the drunken jest.
Insult the cheerful god with tears no more;
He lenient heal'd the Cretan maid, who lay
By Theseus left upon a lonely shore.
Whose learned strains thy lover's crimes have shown:
Happy, ye youths who hear my warning tongue,
And by another's sufferings heal your own.
Tho' her fond tongue the softest accents spoke;
Tho' by her eyes she swear, tho' her false mind
The Queen of Heaven and Queen of Love invoke,
Gives laughing Jove the perjuries of love.—
Why dwell for ever on my perjur'd fair?
Far, far away ye words of anguish move!
With thee the summer's livelong day to wear!
Perfidious maid! a love so true to slight;
Perfidious maid! yet, though perfidious, dear.
Cool from the lucid spring the full-ag'd wine;
If the vain nymph fly from our social joy
To seek a stranger bed, still must I pine?
Boy, be the bowl with stronger beverage crown'd;
With Tyrian perfumes wet, should blooming flowers
Long long ere this about my brows be bound.
Verses on several subjects (1802) | ||