Ode XXIII.
Cf. Dobson's roundel: 'You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy, | As some stray fawn that seeks its mother.' For difference between ancient and modern feeling, cf. Landor's exquisite 'Gracefully shy is yon Gazelle.' For the comparison of the girl to a fawn, cf. Anacreon, fr. 51. Spenser, F. Q. 3. 7. 1: 'Like as an hind forth singled from the herd, | That hath escaped from a ravenous beast, | Yet flies away of her own feet afeard; | And every leaf, that shaketh with the least | Murmur of wind, her terror hath increased.'Poor translation by Hamilton, Johnson's Poets, 15. 635.
vitas: many Mss. read vitat, probably because of tremit below.
pavidam: cf. 1. 2. 11.
non sine: for this favorite Horatian litotes, cf. 1. 25. 16;3. 4. 20; 3. 6. 29; 3. 7. 7; 3. 13. 2; 3. 26. 2; 3. 29. 38; 4. 1. 24.
siluae: trisyllabic. Epode 13. 2.
veris . . . adventus: so the Mss. To this bold and beautiful expression it has been objected that at the coming of spring the trees have no leaves (but cf. umbrosis, 1. 4. 10) and the does no fawns, and many editors print, after Bentley, vepris . . . ad ventum, which is ingenious and smoothly parallel with rubum dimovere below. Cf. Rossetti, Love's Nocturne, 'Where in groves the gracile spring | Trembles'; Swinburne Atalanta, 'When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces | The mother of months in meadow or plain, | Fills the shadows and windy places, | With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.' For adventus, cf. Milton's 'Far off his coming shone.'
virides: cf. Verg. Ec. 2. 9, Nunc virides etiam occultant spineta lacertos. Cf. Χλωρο-σαῦρα.
atqui: 3. 5. 49; 3. 7. 9; Epode5. 67.—non ego te: 1. 18. 11; 4. 9. 30.—aspera: cf. 1. 37. 26; 3. 2. 10.
Gaetulus: of northwest Africa, 3. 20. 2.—frangere: epexegetic, to crush with teeth. Il. 11. 113-14.
tempestiva: with viro. Cf. 3. 19. 27; 4. 1. 9; VergAen. 7. 53, Iam matura viro plenis iam nubilis annis.—sequi: with matrem. Cf. Eugene Field's amusing 'Chaucerian paraphrase,' 'Your moder ben well enow so farre she goeth, | But that ben not farre enow, God knoweth.' Cf. also his 'But, Chloe, you're no infant thing | That should esteem a man an ogre: | Let go your mother's apron-string | And pin your faith upon a toga.' But we must not forget in our amusement that free-and-easy English misrepresents Horace's exquisite ease quite as grossly as the pseudo-classic eighteenth century pedantry which tempts us less.
