42
ANACREON.
For beauteous nymphs it bears the sway,
For none so beauteous sure as they.
Next, my lovely Lesbians tell,
Ionians, Carians, those that dwell
At far-famed Rhodes—you may in all
The trifling sum two thousand call.
What! think'st thou that I yet have done?
Resume thy tablets—one by one,[1]
I'll count thee o'er my Syrian fair,
And Egypt too must claim a share;
And fertile Creta yet remains,[2]
Where Love his empire still maintains.
The dark-eyed nymphs that shared my flame,
At Spain and Afric, shall I name?
To sultry India's farthest pole,
Whose dusky charms have fired my soul!
ODE XXXIII.—ON A SWALLOW.
Pretty, twittering, fickle guest,
Here you build your summer nest;
But, ere storms deface the sky,
Back to warmer worlds you fly;[3]
- ↑ The page to whom Anacreon is here making this extravagant enumeration, may well be supposed to drop his tablets in astonishment, as the original expression is, "add still to the wax." The ancients wrote on tablets made of this material with a pointed instrument called a stylus or style, the upper end of which was flat and blunt, for the purpose of making erasures. Hence arose the term "an author's style," as applied to his peculiar mode of expression.
- ↑ Anacreon, to denote its fertility, calls it Crete abounding in all things. It is mentioned by the ancient poets as having a hundred cities.
- ↑ "Since the days of Anacreon to our own, this is a problem in natural history which has never been solved. Among the ancients it was a generally received opinion that swallows and other birds, on the approach of winter, crossed the sea in search of warmer climates; but more accurate observers have taught us to doubt the truth of this opinion. Pecklinius, in his book
