Anacreon thus celebrates the Rose, which it was the custom among the ancients to 

 throw into bowls of wine, and make chaplets of to adorn the Bacchanalians. 



Buds of Roses, virgin flowers, 



Cuird from Cupid's balmy bowers, 



In the bowl of Bacchus steep, 



Till with crimson drops they weep, 



Twine the Rose, the garland twine, 



Every leaf distilling wine ; 



Drink and smile, and let us think 



That we were born to smile and drink. 



Rose! thou art the sweetest flower 



That ever drank the purple shower; 



Rose! thou are the fondest child 



Of dimpled Spring, the Wood-Nymph wild ! 



Even the Gods, who walk the sky, 



Are amorous of thy scented sigh. 



Cupid too, in Paphian shades, 



His hair with rosy fillet braids, 



When with the blushing nimble Graces, 



The merry winding dance he traces. 



There is another Ode of Anacreon in praise of the Rose, extremely beautiful, giving an 

 account of its birth. 



See the young, the timid Spring 

 Gives to the breeze her spangled wing; 

 While virgin Graces, w r arm with may, 

 Fling Roses o'er her dewy way. 

 The murmuring billows of the deep 

 Have languished into silent sleep; 

 And mark ! the flitting sea-birds lave 

 Their plumes in yon reflecting wave ; 

 And cranes from hoary winter fly, 

 To flutter in a kinder sky ; 

 Now the genial star of day 

 Dissolves the murky clouds away, 

 And cultured field, and winding stream, 

 Are sweetly tissued by his beam. 

 When Spring bedecks the dewy scene, 

 How sweet to walk the velvet green, 



b 



That the Nightingale retires to Egypt is confirmed by Sonnini in his Travels into Upper and Lower Egypt. « I met," 

 savs this Traveller " with several Nightingales, who frequent the most shady thickets in the vicinity of the water. They are 



"silent in Egypt, which they leave in spring, to warble out their songs of love, and hail her arrival in other countries." 



The female birds appear with us always a few days before the males are seen. They reach Italy usually on the twenty-fourth 

 of March, and visit our isle by the second of April. 



