THE GAZERS. [call; COME, let's go on, where love and youth does To show such stores, and nothing grant, As man and wife in picture do: But th' amour at last improv'd; Unless it lead to farther bliss, Unless it heal, as well as strike: I would not, salamander-like, In scorching heats always to live desire, But, like a martyr, pass to Heaven through fire. Mark how the lusty Sun salutes the Spring, And gently kisses every thing! His loving beams unlock each maiden flower, Then on the earth, with bridegroom-heat, The Sun himself, although all eye he be, THE INCURABLE. I TRY'D if books would cure my love, but found I apply'd receipts of business to my wound, As well might men who in a fever fry, As well might men who mad in darkness lie, I try'd devotion, sermons, frequent prayer, I try'd in wine to drown the mighty care; Like drunkards' eyes, my troubled fancy there I try'd what mirth and gaiety would do, And 'bove a clinch it could not rise. 'Gainst this, some new desire to stir, And lov'd again, but 'twas where I espy'd Some faint resemblances of her. The physic made me worse, with which I strove As wholesome med'cines the disease improve HONOUR. SHE loves, and she confesses too; What's this, ye gods! what can it be? Have I o'ercome all real foes, THE INNOCENT ILL. THOUGH all thy gestures and discourses be In all thy speech appear, That what to th' eye a beauteous face, So cunningly it wounds the heart, It strikes such heat through every part, That thou a tempter worse than Satan art. Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracks have So much as of original sin, Such charms thy beauty wears, as might Desires in dying confess'd saints excite: Thou, with strange adultery, Dost in each breast a brothel keep; And some enjoy thee when they sleep. [been That a fly's death 's a wound to thee; Of judge, of torturer, and of weapon too. Which God did for our faults create! But noblest charity in thee. What though the flower itself do waste, The essence from it drawn does long and sweeter last. She. No: I'm undone; my honour thou hast slain, Is but t' embalm a body dead; The figure may remain, the life and beauty's fled. He. Never, my dear, was Honour yet undone Like tapers shut in ancient urns, She. Thou first, perhaps, who didst the fault commit, Wilt make thy wicked boast of it; Nor think a perfect victory gain'd, lead enchain'd. VERSES LOST UPON A WAGER. A tongue so blest by Nature and by Art, When th' authority's divine. She said, she said herself it would be so ; Errour the name of blindness bore; There's no man that has eyes would bet for me. When they descend to human view) So dazzling bright, yet so transparent clear, Which could thy shape naked like Truth espy. Than what I ow'd to thee before: Who would not venture for that debt to play, Which he were bound howe'er to pay? If Nature gave me power to write in verse, She gave it me thy praises to rehearse: Thy wondrous beauty and thy wit Has such a sovereign right to it, That no man's Muse for public vent is free, Till she has paid her customs first to thee. BATHING IN THE RIVER. As she at first took me ; Though every night the Sun himself set there, Why to mute fish should thou thyself discover, Maids bury: and, for aught we know, I laugh'd the wanton play to view; And still old lovers yield the place to new. Then tell her what your pride doth cost, And how your use and beauty's lost, When rigorous Winter binds you up with frost. Tell her, her beauties and her youth, like thee, Haste without stop to a devouring sea; Where they will mix'd and undistinguish'd lie With all the meanest things that die; As in the ocean thou Alas! what comfort is 't that I am grown Who has not only sack'd, but quite burnt down the town. THE FORCE OF LOVE. PRESERVED FROM AN OLD MANUSCRIPT. THROW an apple up an hill, Down the apple tumbles still; Down the mountain flows the stream, Metals grow within the mine, Man is born to live and die, Does the cedar love the mountain! And not one star in Heaven offers to take thy part. Seek the birds in spring to pair? If e'er I clear my heart of this desire, If e'er it home to its breast retire, A lover burnt like me for ever dreads the fire. The pox, the plague, and every small disease Breathes the rose-bud scented air Should you this deny, you'll prove Nature is averse to Love. As the wencher loves a lass, We're by those serpents bit; but we're devour'd When young maidens courtship shun by these. When the Moon out-shines the Sun, Ir a man should undertake to translate Pindar almost without any thing else, makes an excelword for word, it would be thought, that one mad-lent poet; for though the grammarians and critics man had translated another; as may appear, when he that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving. And sure, rhyme, without the addition of wit, and the spirit of poetry, (quod nequeo monstrare & sentio tantum) would but make it ten times more distracted than it is in prose. We must consider in Pindar the great difference of time betwixt his age and ours, which changes, as in pictures, at least the colours of poetry; the no Jess difference betwixt the religions and customs of our countries; and a thousand particularities of places, persons, and manners, which do but confusedly appear to our eyes at so great a dis And have laboured to reduce his verses into regular worthy kind of servitude, is incapable of producing any thing good or noble. I have seen originals, both in painting and poesy, much more beautiful than their natural objects; but I never saw a copy better than the original: which in deed cannot be otherwise; for men resolving in no case to shoot beyond the mark, it is a thousand to one if they shoot not short of it. It does not at all trouble me, that the grammarians, perhaps, will not suffer this libertine way of rendering foreign authors to be called translation; for I am not so much enamoured of the name translator, as not to wish rather to be something better, though it want yet a name. I speak not so much all this, in defence of my manner of translating, or imitating, (or what other title they please) the two ensuing Odes of Pindar; for that would not deserve half these words; as by this occasion to rectify the opinion of divers men upon this matter. The Psalms of David (which I believe to have been in their original, to the Hebrews of his time, though not to our Hebrews of Buxtorfius's making, the most exalted pieces of poesy) are a great example of what I have said; all the translators of which, (even Mr. Sandys himself; for in despite of popular errour, I will be bold not to except him) for this very reason, that they have not sought to supply the lost excellencies of another language with new ones in their own, are so far from doing honour, or at least justice, to that divine poet, that methinks they revile him worse than Shimei. And Buchanan himself (though much the best of them all, and indeed a great person) comes in my opinion no less short of David, than his country docs of Judea. Upon this ground I have, in these two Odes of Pindar, taken, left out, and added, what I please; nor make it so much my aim to let the reader know precisely what he spoke, as what was his way and manner of speaking; which has not been yet (that I know of) introduced into English, though it be the noblest and highest kind of writing in verse; and which might, perhaps, be put into the list of Pancirolus, among the lost inventions of antiquity. This essay is but to try how it will look in an English habit: for which experiment I have chosen one of his Olympic, and another of his Nemæan Odes; which are as followeth, THE SECOND OLYMPIC ODE OF Written in praise of Theron, prince of Agrigentum, (a famous city in Sicily, built by his ancestors) who, in the seventy-seventh Olympic, won the chariot-prize. He is commended from the nobility of his race, (whose story is often toucht on) from his great riches, (an ordinary common-place in Pindar) from his hospitality, munificence, and other virtues. The Ode (according to the constant custom of the poet) consists more in digressions, than in the main subject: and the reader must not be choqued to hear him speak so often of his own Muse; for that is a liberty which this kind of poetry can hardly live without. QUEEN of all harmonious things, Dancing words, and speaking strings! [voice. But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy Is Theron the next honour claims: Theron there, and he alone, Ev'n his own swift forefathers has outgone, Till on the fatal bank at last Which does itself i' th' river by With pride and joy espy. Then chearful notes their painted years did sing, Their genuine virtues did more sweet and clear, To which, great son of Rhea! say For the past sufferings of this noble race Hearken no more to thy command) Of the blue-ey'd Nereides, But death did them from future dangers free; For living man's security, |