Si, perdant pour jamais tous ses droits sur mon cœur,
Chloé vous laissoit sans rivale——
Lydie
Calaïs est charmant: mais je n’aime que vous,
Ingrat, mon cœur vous justifie;
Heureuse également en des liens si doux,
De perdre ou de passer la vie.[37]
If any thing is faulty in this excellent translation, it is the last stanza, which does not convey the happy petulance, the procacitas of the original. The reader may compare with this, the fine translation of the same ode by Bishop Atterbury, “Whilst I was fond, and you were kind,” which is too well known to require insertion.
The fourth example is a translation by Dr. Jortin of that beautiful fragment of Simonides, preserved by Dionysius, in which Danae, exposed with her child to the fury of the ocean, by command of her inhuman father, is described lamenting over her sleeping infant.