Pindar and Anacreon/Anacreon/Ode 22

by Anacreon

ODE XXII.—THE BOWER.^[1]

Haste, my love, this shade to seek,
The spreading tree is passing fair,
Like clust'ring curls on Beauty's cheek,
See it waves its wanton hair.

The streamlet murm'ring at our feet
Rolls its music through the grove;^[2]
'Tis a scene for lovers meet,
Where each object whispers love.

The tree, the stream, the silent hour,
All persuasive, seem to say,

"Viewing such a lovely bower,
Can you pass another way?"

1. This elegant little ode seems to be a great favourite with the translators and commentators. It has not been thought unworthy of his genius even by the philosophical Beattie, among whose poems it is to be found translated with singular accuracy and beauty.
2. In the original it is literally a "fountain rolling or flowing with persuasion;" a beauty of expression which we must be contented to admire with very little hope of imitating, since our language seems to afford few facilities for accommodating sound to sense. Pope, no mean master of melody, has attempted it in that passage in his Art of Poetry intended to represent the whispering breeze and the flowing stream.
   

   "Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
   And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows."

   On this passage Dr. Johnson, in all the pride of acute, but rather ill-natured criticism, remarks, that "the verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze must be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants."—Rambler, vol. i., No. 92.