Consult your mirror, mark with care,[1]
How scanty now your silver hair;[2]
Old wintry Time has shed his snows,
And bald and bare your forehead shows."
But faith! I know not where they're gone,
Or if I've any left—or none;
But this I know, that every day
Shall see me sportive, blithe, and gay;
For 'tis our wisdom so to do
The nearer death appears in view.
ODE XII.—ON A SWALLOW.
What punishment shall I decree,
Vexatious, chattering bird, to thee?
Say, shall I clip thy restless wing?
Or, like the cruel Thracian king,[3]
Tear out that tongue whose noisy scream
Has loused me from so sweet a dream?
- ↑ Before the invention of glass, mirrors were used made of brass or some other metal, and sometimes of stones highly polished.
- ↑ It was remarked by an ancient author that Venus herself, if destitute of hair, would not, though surrounded by the Loves and Graces, have had charms sufficient to please her husband Vulcan.
- ↑ Tereus, king of Thrace, for whose story the reader is referred to the sixth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Though Anacreon seems to adopt the less usual acceptation of the fable, that it was Philomela, and not Progne, who was transformed into a swallow.
may sometimes be preserved, it is impossible to convey an adequate idea of that facility of thought and easiness of expression which are so peculiarly his own. What would in others justly be considered the perfection of art, in him appears perfectly natural; and one might almost imagine that his numbers flowed spontaneously to the warblings of his lyre. These remarks are particularly applicable to this ode, which, for simplicity and playfulness of expression, is inferior to no one in the collection.
