THE PICTURE

by: Anacreon (c.572-488 BC)

AINTER, 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,

And if colours so much right

Can but do her, let it too

Smell of aromatic dew;

Underneath this shade, must then

Draw her alabaster brow;

Her dark eyebrows so dispose

That they neither part nor close

But by a divorce so slight

Be disjoined, may cheat the sight:

From her kindly killing eye

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;

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

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.

So, to life th' hast come so near,

All of her, but voice, is here.

 

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS STANLEY, 1651

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