As o'er his lips the accents die!
Never sure on earth has been
Half so bright, so blest a scene.
It seems as Love himself had come
To make this spot his chosen home;--[2]
And Venus, too, with all her wiles,
And Bacchus, shedding rosy smiles,
All, all are here, to hail with me
The Genius of Festivity!
[1] Respecting the barbiton a host of authorities may be collected, which,
after all, leave us ignorant of the nature of the instrument. There is
scarcely any point upon which we are so totally uninformed as the music of
the ancients. The authors extant upon the subject are, I imagine, little
understood; and certainly if one of their moods was a progression by
quarter-tones, which we are told was the nature of the enharmonic scale,
simplicity was by no means the characteristic of their melody; for this is
a nicety of progression of which modern music is not susceptible. The
invention of the barbiton is, by Athenaeus, attributed to Anacreon.
[2] The introduction of these deities to the festival is merely
allegorical. Madame Dacier thinks that the poet describes a masquerade,
where these deities were personated by the company in masks. The
translation will conform with either idea.
ODE XLIV.[1]
Buds of roses, virgin flowers,
Culled from Cupid's balmy bowers,
In the bowl of Bacchus steep,
Till with crimson drops they weep.
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