THE ODES OF ANACREON.

THE ODES OF ANACREON.

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS MOORE.

WITH FIFTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIVE DESIGNS BY

GIRODET DE ROUSSY.

NOW FIRST PRODUCED IN ENGLAND.

LONDON: JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.

LONDON: Strangeways and Walden, Printers, Castle St. Leicester Sq.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

Amongst the innumerable translators of Anacreon, there was one—a Frenchman by birth—who was both an illustrious painter and a literary enthusiast. Girodet de Roussy, inspired by a genius altogether Greek in its character, has translated Anacreon better by his pencil than he could have been translated by words. One might fancy that his designs had been executed under Anacreon's own eye by some Greek artist, who had himself witnessed that soft and voluptuous existence, where song and pleasure are one.

Seldom indeed have chasteness of execution and voluptuousness of character been so curiously and indissolubly blended. Seldom has a modern artist so happily caught the spirit of an ancient poet. We seem to be transported, as in a dream, to the vines, and orange-groves, and cloudless skies of Greece, and the wearied spirit abandons itself for a while to the soft influences of the azure heaven, the countless luxuriance of roses, the undulating forms of the fair girls dancing in the shade, while youthful attendants brim the beaker with wine. Under such influences we remember that youth, and love, and mirth are immortal, and we say with Horace,—

In that close wrestle of the genius that imitates with the genius that creates, Girodet alone came out from the trial successfully. He has shown himself the rival of Anacreon in grace, in abandon, in naïveté. He has succeeded in depicting his poet's theme with equal elegance and delicacy. Loving with a real love those old Greek songs, he has displayed them in living beauty before our eyes in fifty-four exquisite drawings. To attempt such a masterpiece required a poet's as well as a painter's skill; and Girodet was both a painter and a poet.

In examining these compositions, one cannot abstain from a certain kind of surprise: all the odes of Anacreon revolve upon two or three central ideas, expressed in a manner full of grace, unquestionably, but still always the same ideas. The artist, while not deviating from the narrow circle traced for him by the poet, shows a fecundity and variety that are truly marvellous—that astonish and enchant us at the same time. The nobility, elegance, and wealth of accessories that prevail throughout the whole series might, as we have already hinted, lead us to suppose that we owed them to one of the famous artists that Greece produced: the painter and the poet seem to have been born under one heaven, and informed with one soul.

The manners of the time in which Anacreon lived permitted him to say many things which, in their crudity, might offend our modern taste. Girodet is not less voluptuous than Anacreon; but he always maintains that grace and delicacy which add so great a charm to the voluptuous: nowhere in his animated panorama is sight or sense shocked.

These designs originally accompanied a translation of the Odes of Anacreon, made by the painter himself and published shortly after his death. Some small photographs of them on a greatly reduced scale appeared in 1864, in an exquisite little edition of the original Greek, from the press of Firmin Didot, at the almost prohibitive price of Two Pounds. The present reproductions are on a scale more proportionate with the originals, and constitute the first appearance of Girodet's designs in England, where, we feel assured, they will be appreciated as they deserve by all true lovers of classical art.

The English verse-translation of Moore has been chosen to accompany them, because, though it has often been objected to by the learned for its imperfect scholarship, it seemed to us to be most in harmony with the real spirit of the great French painter, and of the old Greek poet himself.

Oct. 25, 1869.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FRONTISPIECE—THE APOTHEOSIS OF ANACREON.

ODE I.

I often wish this languid lyre, This warbler of my soul's desire, Could raise the breath of song sublime, To men of fame in former time. But when the soaring theme I try, Along the chords my numbers die, And whisper, with dissolving tone, 'Our sighs are given to love alone!' Indignant at the feeble lay, I tore the panting chords away, Attuned them to a nobler swell, And struck again the breathing shell;

ODE II.

TO all that breathe the airs of heaven, Some boon of strength has Nature given. When the majestic bull was born, She fenced his brow with wreathèd horn. She arm'd the courser's foot of air, And wing'd with speed the panting hare. She gave the lion fangs of terror, And, on the ocean's crystal mirror, Taught the unnumber'd scaly throng To trace their liquid path along; While for the umbrage of the grove,

ODE III.

'TWAS noon of night, when round the pole The sullen Bear is seen to roll; And mortals, wearied with the day, Are slumbering all their cares away; An infant, at that dreary hour, Came weeping to my silent bower, And waked me with a piteous prayer, To save him from the midnight air! 'And who art thou,' I waking cry, 'That bidd'st my blissful visions fly?' 'O gentle sire!' the infant said, 'In pity take me to thy shed; Nor fear deceit: a lonely child I wander o'er the gloomy wild.

ODE IV.

STREW me a breathing bed of leaves, Where lotos with the myrtle weaves; And while in luxury's dream I sink, Let me the balm of Bacchus drink! In this delicious hour of joy, Young Love shall be my goblet-boy; Folding his little golden vest, With cinctures, round his snowy breast, Himself shall hover by my side, And minister the racy tide! Swift as the wheels that kindling roll, Our life is hurrying to the goal: A scanty dust, to feed the wind, Is all the trace 'twill leave behind. Why do we shed the rose's bloom Upon the cold insensate tomb? Can flowery breeze, or odour's breath,

ODE V.

BUDS of roses, virgin flowers, Cull'd from Cupid's balmy bowers, In the bowl of Bacchus steep, Till with crimson drops they weep! Twine the rose, the garland twine, Every leaf distilling wine; Drink and smile, and learn to think That we were born to smile and drink. Rose! thou art the sweetest flower That ever drank the amber shower; Rose! thou art the fondest child Of dimpled Spring, the wood-nymph wild! E'en the gods, who walk the sky, Are amorous of thy scented sigh. Cupid too, in Paphian shades, His hair with rosy fillet braids, When with the blushing naked Graces, The wanton winding dance he traces.