Youth's endearing charms are fled;

Hoary locks deform my head;

Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,

All the flowers of life decay.[2]

Withering age begins to trace

Sad memorials o'er my face;

Time has shed its sweetest bloom

All the future must be gloom.

This it is that sets me sighing;

Dreary is the thought of dying![3]

Lone and dismal is the road,

Down to Pluto's dark abode;

And, when once the journey's o'er,

Ah! we can return no more!

[1] The intrusion of this melancholy ode, among the careless levities of our poet, reminds us of the skeletons which the Egyptians used to hang up in the banquet-rooms, to inculcate a thought of mortality even amidst the dissipations of mirth. If it were not for the beauty of its numbers, the Teian Muse should disown this ode.

[2] Horace often, with feeling and elegance, deplores the fugacity of human enjoyments.

[3] Regnier, a libertine French poet, has written some sonnets on the approach of death, full of gloomy and trembling repentance. Chaulieu, however, supports more consistently the spirit of the Epicurean philosopher. See his poem, addressed to the Marquis de Lafare.