LAMENTATION OF DANAE.

WHEN round the well-fram'd ark the blowing

blast

Roar'd, and the heaving whirlpools of the deep With rough'ning surge seem'd threatening to o'er

turn

The wide-tost vessel, not with tearless cheeks
The mother round her infant gently twined
Her tender arm, and cried, "Ah me! my child!
What sufferings I endure! thou sleep'st the while,
Inhaling in thy milky-breathing breast
The balm of slumber; though imprison'd here
In undelightful dwelling; brassy-wedged;
Alone illumined by the stars of night,

And black and dark within. Thou heedest not
The wave that leaps above thee, while its spray
Wets not the locks deep-clust'ring round thy head;
Nor hears't the shrill winds' hollow-whisp'ring

sounds,

While on thy purple downy mantle stretch'd,

With count'nance flush'd in sleeping loveliness.

Then, if this dreadful peril would to thee
Be dreadful, turn a light unconscious ear
To my lamentings: sleep! I bid thee sleep,
My infant! oh, may the tremendous surge
Sleep also may th' immeasurable scene
Of watery perils sleep, and be at rest!

And void, and frustrate, prove this dark device, I do conjure thee, Jove! and, though my words May rise to boldness, at thy hands I ask

A righteous vengeance, by this infant's aid!"

Pindar.

PINDAR.

Bef. Ch. 521.

ODES.

English Translators:

WEST, PYE, BANNISTER, GIRDLESTONE.

PINDARUS was born at Thebes, in Boeotia, about forty years before Xerxes, the Persian, invaded Greece. He was regarded with such veneration, that the priestess of the Delphic oracle ordered the people to appropriate to him a share of their first fruits and an iron chair was placed for him in the temple of Apollo, in which he was accus

tomed to sit, and declaim his verses. Hiero, king of Sicily, was his patron: and he was engaged, at a great price, by the different conquerors in the Games of Greece, to compose triumphal odes in their honour. Although generally unrivalled in the national contests of poetry, he was nevertheless five times surpassed by the poetess Corinna. Pausanias indeed alleges, that the umpires were biassed by the lady's beauty; but, that this should have been the case on five different occasions, is a most improbable story; and the notion seems to have originated in the common illiberal jealousy of female genius. The women of Greece furnish perpetual instances of fine intellect; and I know not if Sappho be excelled by any male writer, in a style at once energetic and simple. The statue of Pindar was erected in the circus of games at Thebes. His house was spared by the Spartans, when they took that city: an honour equally paid to it by Alexander: to which circumstance Milton alludes in his noble sonnet, written "when thê assault was intended to the city:"