ODE XXXV.[1]
Cupid once upon a bed
Of roses laid his weary head;
Luckless urchin not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee;
The bee awaked--with anger wild
The bee awaked, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
"Oh mother!--I am wounded through--
I die with pain--in sooth I do!
Stung by some little angry thing,
Some serpent on a tiny wing--
A bee it was--for once, I know,
I heard a rustic call it so."
Thus he spoke, and she the while,
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said, "My infant, if so much
Thou feel the little wild-bee's touch,
How must the heart, ah, Cupid be,
The hapless heart that's stung by thee!"
[1] Theocritus has imitated this beautiful ode in his nineteenth idyl; but
is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and
naivete of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, has
sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I allude
begins thus:--
Upon a day, as Love lay sweetly slumbering
All in his mother's lap;
A gentle bee, with his loud trumpet murmuring,
About him flew by hap, etc.
ODE XXXVI.[1]
If hoarded gold possest the power
To lengthen life's too fleeting hour,
And purchase from the hand of death
A little span, a moment's breath,
How I would love the precious ore!
And every hour should swell my store;
That when death came, with shadowy pinion,
To waft me to his bleak dominion,
I might, by bribes, my doom delay,
And bid him call some distant day.
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