UPON THE DESCRIPTION OF THE MEDICEAN VENUS IN THE 4TH CANTO OF CHILDE HAROLD, STANZAS LI. AND LII.
LI.
"Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise?
Or to more deeply blest Anchises? or,
In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War?
And gazing in thy face as toward a star
Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn,
Feeding on thy sweet cheek![4] while thy lips are
With lava kisses melting while they burn,
Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn!
LII.
Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love,
Their full divinity inadequate
That feeling to express, or to improve,
The gods become as mortals, and man's fate
Has moments like their brightest ——" &c. &c.
[4] To these beautiful and glowing lines the author has appended the following:
" Ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐστιᾶν."
"Atque oculos pascat uterque suos."
OVID. Amor. lib. iii.
It seems to me that the noble poet has condescended to avail himself of a little ruse in referring to this passage of Ovid. It would have been perhaps more honest to have referred his readers to those magnificent lines in the opening address to Venus, by Lucretius, "De Rerum Naturâ," beginning,—
"Æneadum genitrix, hominum divômque voluptas,
Alma Venus!" &c.
I subjoin the verses which Lord Byron really had in mind when he wrote the foregoing stanzas:
"Nam tu sola potes tranquillâ pace juvare
Mortaleis: quoniam belli fera mœnera Mavors
Armipotens regit, in gremium qui sæpe tuum se
Rejicit, æterno devictus volnere Amoris:
Atque ita, suspiciens tereti cervice reposta
Pascit amore avidos, inhians in te, Dea, visus;
Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore.
Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
Funde, petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem."
Surely if the author of Childe Harold were indebted to any ancient poet for some ideas embodied in the lines cited, it was to Lucretius and not to Ovid that he should have owned the obligation.
A BORDERER.