T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
The Picture
By Anacreon (582–485 B.C.)(From the Odes; translated by Thomas Stanley, 1651) |
PAINTER, by unmatch’d desert | |
| Master of the Rhodian art, | |
| Come, my absent mistress take, | |
| As I shall describe her: make | |
| First her hair, as black as bright, | 5 |
| And if colors so much right | |
| Can but do her, let it too | |
| Smell of aromatic dew; | |
| Underneath this shade, must thou | |
| Draw her alabaster brow; | 10 |
| Her dark eyebrows so dispose | |
| That they neither part nor close, | |
| But by a divorce so slight | |
| Be disjoin’d, may cheat the sight: | |
| From her kindly killing eye | 15 |
| Make a flash of lightning fly, | |
| Sparkling like Minerva’s, yet | |
| Like Cythera’s mildly sweet: | |
| Roses in milk swimming seek | |
| For the pattern of her cheek: | 20 |
| In her lip such moving blisses, | |
| As from all may challenge kisses; | |
| Round about her neck (outvying | |
| Parian stone) the Graces flying; | |
| And o’er all her limbs at last | 25 |
| A loose purple mantle cast; | |
| But so ordered that the eye | |
| Some part naked may descry, | |
| An essay by which the rest | |
| That lies hidden may be guess’d. | 30 |
| So, to life th’ hast come so near, | |
| All of her, but voice, is here. | |