A Collection of Miscellany poems and letters Comical and Serious. By Jo. Harvey |
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TO Dr. G. D. On his Translation of a Part of Catullus. |
 | A Collection of Miscellany poems and letters |  |
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TO Dr. G. D. On his Translation of a Part of Catullus.
Happy! Thrice happy is the charming Maid,
Who hath a Poet to her Toils betray'd;
Obscurely might she live, obscurely dye,
Did not the Bard to her Assistance fly:
All that survives her Urn, she owes his Flame,
Whose deathless Numbers eterniz'd her Name.
Who hath a Poet to her Toils betray'd;
Obscurely might she live, obscurely dye,
Did not the Bard to her Assistance fly:
All that survives her Urn, she owes his Flame,
Whose deathless Numbers eterniz'd her Name.
This Lesbia in her fam'd Veronian found,
Nor more by him, than our soft Bard renown'd;
By thee in softer Notes sung on our Lawns,
Bright Lesbia's Praises charm the wondring Fawns!
The Satyrs, Nymphs, and all the Sylvan Train
Trip, joyful, to thy Numbers o'er the Plain:
Forgetting Food, the Flocks in Silence gaze,
And, ravish'd, listen to thy charming Lays.
How smiles Catullus on th'Elysian Plains,
To find his Lesbia live in British Strains?
To find his Love-born Songs thus wafted o'er,
And warbl'd softer on the British Shore.
Nor more by him, than our soft Bard renown'd;
By thee in softer Notes sung on our Lawns,
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The Satyrs, Nymphs, and all the Sylvan Train
Trip, joyful, to thy Numbers o'er the Plain:
Forgetting Food, the Flocks in Silence gaze,
And, ravish'd, listen to thy charming Lays.
How smiles Catullus on th'Elysian Plains,
To find his Lesbia live in British Strains?
To find his Love-born Songs thus wafted o'er,
And warbl'd softer on the British Shore.
Fain wou'd I pay the mighty Debt I owe,
And bind the Bays on Damon's sacred Brow;
Fain wou'd my Soul on soaring Pinions rise,
And waft his Fame, in Raptures, to the Skies:
But here the God forsakes my lab'ring Breast,
And I can only pant—and wish the rest.
And bind the Bays on Damon's sacred Brow;
Fain wou'd my Soul on soaring Pinions rise,
And waft his Fame, in Raptures, to the Skies:
But here the God forsakes my lab'ring Breast,
And I can only pant—and wish the rest.
| A Collection of Miscellany poems and letters | |