"But when to lash loose vices you aspire,
And seek to catch the true satiric fire,
All others' leaves pass over, all neglect,
But Juvenal's, the shrewd and circumspect;
None to the high court-taste with such success
Feels the town's pulse—ev'n Horace's is less."
"What of the swain Anchises shall I say,
But ask Idalian Venus by the way
Who is the gardener of those flowers of hers,
Or Ida's pencil who her fancy stirs?
Did not Ulysses farm the watery waste?
How then could he Calypso's fruitage taste?"
What ridiculous nonsense! Will any one believe that these are by the same author, and found in the same piece as the following?—
"Come, then, fair mountaineer, hide not nor flee,
Thou, by thy marriage with this stream, shalt be
Queen of the sweetest waves that in their sweep
Love to give lustre to the shady deep.
'Tis just that thou respond to love's light pain,
With kind acknowledgment, not coy disdain."
[L] One of his sapphics is written with so much delicacy and beauty that I cannot resist the temptation of translating it.
To the Zephyr.
"Sweet neighbour of the green, leaf-shaking grove,
Eternal guest of April, frolic child
Of a sad sire, life-breath of mother Love,
Favonius, zephyr mild!
If thou hast learned like me to love—away!
Thou who hast borne the murmurs of my cry;
Hence—no demur—and to my Flora say,
Say that 'I die!'