Gay Venus hates this cold disdain

Cease then its rigours to maintain,
That sprightly joys impede,

Lest the strain'd cord, with which you bind
The freedom of my amorous mind,

In rapid whirl recede!

Born of a jocund Tuscan sire,

Did he transmit his ardent fire,
That, like Ulysses' Queen,

His beauteous daughter still should prove
Relentless to the sighs of love,

With frozen heart and mien ?

If nor blue cheek of shivering swain,
Nor yet his richest gifts obtain

Your smile, and soft'ning brow;
Nor if a faithless husband's rage
For a gay Syren of the stage,
And broken nuptial vow;

If weak e'en Jealousy should prove
To bend your heart to truer love,

Yet pity these my pains,

O Nymph, than oaks more hard, and fierce

As snakes, that Afric's thickets pierce,

Those terrors of the plains!

When heavy falls the pattering shower,
And streaming spouts their torrents pour
Upon my shrinking head,

Not always shall wild Love command
These limbs obsequiously to stand

Beneath your dropping shed.

TO THE

FOUNTAIN OF BLANDUSIA.*

BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE THIRTEENTH.

NYMPH of the stream, whose source perpetual pours
The living waters thro' the sparkling sand,
Cups of bright wine, enwreath'd with summer flowers,
For rich libation, round thy brink shall stand,
When on the morrow, at thy Bard's decree,
A young and spotless kid is sacrificed to thee.

He, while his brows the primal antlers swell, Conscious of strength, and gay of heart, prepares To meet the female, and the foe repel.—

In vain he wishes, and in vain he dares!

His ardent blood thy pebbly bed shall stain,
Till each translucent wave flows crimson to the plain.

* It was common with the Antients to consecrate fountains by a sacrifice, and vinous libations, poured from goblets crowned with flowers. Lively imaginations glow over the idea of such a beautiful ceremony.

In vain shall Sirius shake his fiery hairs

O'er thy pure flood, with waving poplars veil'd, For thou, when most his sultry influence glares,

Refreshing shade, and cooling draughts shalt yield To all the flocks, that thro' the valley stray, And to the wearied steers, unyok'd at closing day.

Now dear to Fame, sweet fountain, shalt thou flow, Since to my lyre those breathing shades I sing That crown the hollow rock's incumbent brow,

From which thy soft loquacious waters spring. To vie with streams Aonian be thy pride,

As thro' Blandusia's Vale thy silver currents glide!

ΤΟ

TELEPHUS.*

BOOK THE THIRD, ODE THE NINETEENTH.

THE number of the vanish'd years

That mark each famous Grecian reign,
This night, my TELEPHUS, appears
Thy solemn pleasure to explain;

At the feast, held in honour of Licinius Murena having been chosen Augur, Horace endeavours to turn the conversation towards gayer subjects than Grecian Chronology, and the Trojan war, upon which his friend Telephus had been declaiming; and for this purpose seems to have composed the ensuing Ode at table. It concludes with a hint, that the unpleasant state of the poet's mind, respecting his then mistress, incapacitates him for abstracted themes, which demand a serene and collected attention, alike inconsistent with the amorous discontent of the secret heart, and with the temporary exhilaration of the spirits, produced by the occasion on which they were met. This must surely be the meaning of Horace in this Ode, however obscurely expressed. People of sense do not, even in their gayest conversation, start from their subject to ane