Ode Lv.[1]

While we invoke the wreathed spring, Resplendent rose! to thee we'll sing; Resplendent rose, the flower of flowers, Whose breath perfumes the Olympian bowers; Whose virgin blush, of chastened dye, Enchants so much our mortal eye. When pleasure's spring-tide season glows. The Graces love to wreathe the rose; And Venus, in its fresh-blown leaves, An emblem of herself perceives. Oft hath the poet's magic tongue The rose's fair luxuriance sung; And long the Muses, heavenly maids, Have reared it in their tuneful shades. When, at the early glance of morn, It sleeps upon the glittering thorn, 'Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence To cull the timid floweret thence, And wipe with tender hand away The tear that on its blushes lay! 'Tis sweet to hold the infant stems, Yet dropping with Aurora's gems, And fresh inhale the spicy sighs That from the weeping buds arise.

When revel reigns, when mirth is high, And Bacchus beams in every eye, Our rosy fillets scent exhale, And fill with balm the fainting gale. There's naught in nature bright or gay, Where roses do not shed their ray. When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; Young nymphs betray; the Rose's hue, O'er whitest arms it kindles thro'. In Cytherea's form it glows, And mingles with the living snows.

The rose distils a healing balm, The beating pulse of pain to calm; Preserves the cold inurnèd clay, And mocks the vestige of decay: And when, at length, in pale decline, Its florid beauties fade and pine, Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Diffuses odor even in death! Oh! whence could such a plant have sprung? Listen,--for thus the tale is sung. When, humid, from the silvery stream, Effusing beauty's warmest beam, Venus appeared, in flushing hues, Mellowed by ocean's briny dews; When, in the starry courts above, The pregnant brain of mighty Jove Disclosed the nymph of azure glance, The nymph who shakes the martial lance;-- Then, then, in strange eventful hour, The earth produced an infant flower, Which sprung, in blushing glories drest. And wantoned o'er its parent breast. The gods beheld this brilliant birth, And hailed the Rose, the boon of earth! With nectar drops, a ruby tide, The sweetly orient buds they dyed, And bade them bloom, the flowers divine Of him who gave the glorious vine; And bade them on the spangled thorn Expand their bosoms to the morn.

This ode is a brilliant panegyric on the rose. "All antiquity [says Barnes] has produced nothing more beautiful."

From the idea of peculiar excellence, which the ancients attached to this flower, arose a pretty proverbial expression, used by Aristophanes, according to Suidas "You have spoken roses."

In the original here, he enumerates the many epithets of beauty, borrowed from roses, which were used by the poets. We see that poets were dignified in Greece with the title of sages: even the careless Anacreon, who lived but for love and voluptuousness, was called by Plato the wise Anacreon--fuit haec sapienta quondam.

He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming; and, perhaps (as Barnes thinks), to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector.

The author of the "Pervigilium Veneris" (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the labored luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adonis.

ODE LVI.

He, who instructs the youthful crew To bathe them in the brimmer's dew, And taste, uncloyed by rich excesses, All the bliss that wine possesses; He, who inspires the youth to bound Elastic through the dance's round,-- Bacchus, the god again is here, And leads along the blushing year; The blushing year with vintage teems, Ready to shed those cordial streams, Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth, Illuminate the sons of earth!

Then, when the ripe and vermil wine,-- Blest infant of the pregnant vine, Which now in mellow clusters swells,-- Oh! when it bursts its roseate cells, Brightly the joyous stream shall flow, To balsam every mortal woe! None shall be then cast down or weak, For health and joy shall light each cheek; No heart will then desponding sigh, For wine shall bid despondence fly. Thus--till another autumn's glow Shall bid another vintage flow.

Madame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Mere, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See Bayle, art. Helène.