While our rosy fillets shed

Freshness o'er each fervid head,

With many a cup and many a smile

The festal moments we beguile.

And while the harp, impassioned flings

Tuneful rapture from its strings,[1]

Some airy nymph, with graceful bound,

Keeps measure to the music's sound;

Waving, in her snowy hand,

The leafy Bacchanalian wand,

Which, as the tripping wanton flies,

Trembles all over to her sighs.

A youth the while, with loosened hair,

Floating on the listless air,

Sings, to the wild harp's tender tone,

A tale of woe, alas, his own;

And oh, the sadness in his sigh.

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.