"anacreon" poems
Translation From Anacreon
I wish to tune my quivering lyre,
To deeds of fame, and notes of fire;
To echo, from its rising swell,
How heroes fought and nations fell,
When Atreus’ sons advanc’d to war,
Or Tyrian Cadmus rov’d afar;
But still, to martial strains unknown,
My lyre recurs to Love alone.
Fir’d with the hope of future fame,
I seek some nobler Hero’s name;
The dying chords are strung anew,
To war, to war, my harp is due:
With glowing strings, the Epic strain
To Jove’s great son I raise again;
Alcides and his glorious deeds,
Beneath whose arm the Hydra bleeds;
All, all in vain; my wayward lyre
Wakes silver notes of soft Desire.
Adieu, ye Chiefs renown’d in arms!
Adieu the clang of War’s alarms!
To other deeds my soul is strung,
And sweeter notes shall now be sung;
My harp shall all its powers reveal,
To tell the tale my heart must feel;
Love, Love alone, my lyre shall claim,
In songs of bliss and sighs of flame.
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Mingle with the genial bowl
The Rose, the ‘flow’ret’ of the Soul,
The Rose and Grape together quaff’d,
How doubly sweet will be the draught!
With Roses crown our jovial brows,
While every cheek with Laughter glows;
While Smiles and Songs, with Wine incite,
To wing our moments with Delight.
Rose by far the fairest birth,
Which Spring and Nature cull from Earth—
Rose whose sweetest perfume given,
Breathes our thoughts from Earth to Heaven.
Rose whom the Deities above,
From Jove to **** dearly love,
When Cytherea’s blooming Boy,
Flies lightly through the dance of Joy,
With him the Graces then combine,
And rosy wreaths their locks entwine.
Then will I sing divinely crown’d,
With dusky leaves my temples bound—
Lyæus! in thy bowers of pleasure,
I’ll wake a wildly thrilling measure.
There will my gentle Girl and I,
Along the mazes sportive fly,
Will bend before thy potent throne—
Rose, Wine, and Beauty, all my own.
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’Twas now the hour when Night had driven
Her car half round yon sable heaven;
Boötes, only, seem’d to roll
His Arctic charge around the Pole;
While mortals, lost in gentle sleep,
Forgot to smile, or ceas’d to weep:
At this lone hour the Paphian boy,
Descending from the realms of joy,
Quick to my gate directs his course,
And knocks with all his little force;
My visions fled, alarm’d I rose,—
“What stranger breaks my blest repose?”
“Alas!” replies the wily child
In faltering accents sweetly mild;
“A hapless Infant here I roam,
Far from my dear maternal home.
Oh! shield me from the wintry blast!
The nightly storm is pouring fast.
No prowling robber lingers here;
A wandering baby who can fear?”
I heard his seeming artless tale,
I heard his sighs upon the gale:
My breast was never pity’s foe,
But felt for all the baby’s woe.
I drew the bar, and by the light
Young Love, the infant, met my sight;
His bow across his shoulders flung,
And thence his fatal quiver hung
(Ah! little did I think the dart
Would rankle soon within my heart).
With care I tend my weary guest,
His little fingers chill my breast;
His glossy curls, his azure wing,
Which droop with nightly showers, I wring;
His shivering limbs the embers warm;
And now reviving from the storm,
Scarce had he felt his wonted glow,
Than swift he seized his slender bow:—
“I fain would know, my gentle host,”
He cried, “if this its strength has lost;
I fear, relax’d with midnight dews,
The strings their former aid refuse.”
With poison tipt, his arrow flies,
Deep in my tortur’d heart it lies:
Then loud the joyous Urchin laugh’d:—
“My bow can still impel the shaft:
’Tis firmly fix’d, thy sighs reveal it;
Say, courteous host, canst thou not feel it?”
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at non effugies meos iambos
If I were to wipe away the constellations from the sky,
You alone would shine,
There in that,
Devoid of all the light,
Which too often clutters
Your radiance and your mind.
And lightheartedly I say this,
While scrawling desires on yellowing pages,
Which I hand out at random
(et ad absurdum).
And throwing little glances,
Lost in endless distance
Or translation.
There is a grand complexity to sight and sound
Which I with my inherent limitations
Fail to grasp.
Depictions wrought by my hands
Could never do the forms of these things
Proper justice.
And instead of facsimile
They become ruined.
And so I blur the lines
Between the real and perceived
As done with paltry sketches,
When the artist has no more good to do,
And so becomes not a bearer of beauty
But a butcher.
I write dis
Jointed poesy
With you in mind.
(No better subject could I find.)
And fill the lines,
And fatten the meter out
With syllables and sibyls
With diacritical marks and dieresis
And critical remarks
By means of
Playing knucklebones with words.
But I’m no Anacreon,
Or Tibullus,
Or Sappho.
And though I may be just a boy reading Catullus,
Anachronistically,
My poems are just as good
Had I been
A wordsmith
Like Wordsworth.
(at non effugies meos iambos)
Jul 19, 2016
Jul 19, 2016 at 11:08 AM UTC
My Thracian filly,
Why do you stare at me askance?
Casting such a scornful glance,
When I only seek to fix the bridle and the bit?
And thereby win with winged words,
Whom auspicious gods above gave chance.
That I may do so is no such crime,
Merely only now give way,
To him who rolls the dice now cast,
And wishing only a wicked kiss.
Be tender, be soft – hold not fast,
For here, forlorn, I do but stand,
And extend but only a weakening hand.
So now with steady hands,
Let me unhook the belt which holds you so chaste,
And if not, return to wretched lands,
Where this bittersweet memory may be erased.
Jul 20, 2016
Jul 20, 2016 at 7:17 AM UTC