Whose was the artist hand that spread
Upon this disk the ocean's bed?
And, in a flight of fancy, high
As aught on earthly wing can fly,
Depicted thus, in semblance warm,
The Queen of Love's voluptuous form
Floating along the silvery sea
In beauty's naked majesty!
Oh! he hath given the enamoured sight
A witching banquet of delight,
Where, gleaming through the waters clear,
Glimpses of undreamt charms appear,
And all that mystery loves to screen,
Fancy, like Faith, adores unseen.[2]
Light as a leaf, that on the breeze
Of summer skims the glassy seas,
She floats along the ocean's breast,
Which undulates in sleepy rest;
While stealing on, she gently pillows
Her bosom on the heaving billows.
Her bosom, like the dew-washed rose,
Her neck, like April's sparkling snows,
Illume the liquid path she traces,
And burn within the stream's embraces.
Thus on she moves, in languid pride,
Encircled by the azure tide,
As some fair lily o'er a bed
Of violets bends its graceful head.
Beneath their queen's inspiring glance,
The dolphins o'er the green sea dance,
Bearing in triumph young Desire,
And infant Love with smiles of fire!
While, glittering through the silver waves,
The tenants of the briny caves
Around the pomp their gambols play,
And gleam along the watery way.
[1] This ode is a very animated description of a picture of Venus on a
discus, which represented the goddess in her first emergence from the
waves. About two centuries after our poet wrote, the pencil of the artist
Apelles embellished this subject, in his famous painting of the Venus
Anadyomene, the model of which, as Pliny informs us, was the beautiful
Campaspe, given to him by Alexander; though, according to Natalis Comes,
lib. vii. cap. 16., it was Phryne who sat to Apelles for the face and
breast of this Venus.
[2] The picture here has all the delicate character of the semi-reducta
Venus, and affords a happy specimen of what the poetry of passion
_ought_ to be--glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart
from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of
description, which, like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno,
is impervious to every beam but that of fancy.