For oh! methought my love was nigh,
Till, startled by thy twittering cry,
She fled upon the wings of morn,[1]
And left me joyless and forlorn.
ODE XIII.—ON HIMSELF.
Poor Atys,[2] as old poets sing,
O'er the wild mountains wandering,
Degraded from his former state,
Cybele's love now turned to hate,
With plaintive cries invoked relief,
Till madness brought an end to grief.
And some who to the waters throng,
Of laurell'd Phœbus, god of song,
At Claros drink the vocal wave,[3]
And with prophetic fury rave;
Then shall not I when wine inspires,
And Chloe's eyes dart love's bright fires,
When bathed in sweets, without alloy,
And rapt in wild, delirious joy,
Refuse a while stern reason's sway,
And be as madly wild as they?
- ↑ Horace has a similar idea in the first ode of the fourth book, which has been thus admirably imitated by Pope:—
"Thee, dress'd in fancy's airy beam,
Absent I follow through th' extended dream;
Now, now I seize, I clasp thy charms,
And now you burst (ah, cruel!) from my arms;
And swiftly shoot along the mall,
Or softly glide by the canal;
Now shorn by Cynthia's silver ray,
And now on rolling waters snatch'd away." - ↑ Atys was a young Phrygian of great beauty, beloved by Cybele, the mother of the gods, who afflicted him with madness for violating his vow of chastity. According to Ovid, he was afterward turned into a pine-tree.
- ↑ Claros was a city of Ionia, near Colophon, and was famous for a fountain sacred to Apollo. The term vocal alludes to the
