❉ note to reader: letterpress attribution states ODE XIX although this may be in error. Rather, ODE XV is believed to be correct translated ode by Irish poet Thomas Moore.

The following poem by Greek poet Anacreon (582 BC – 485 BC) accompanies this photograph in volume pagination:

ODE XIV.

Tell me why, my sweetest dove,
Thus your humid pinions move,
Shedding through the air in showers
Essence of the balmiest flowers?
Tell me whither, whence you rove,
Tell me all, my sweetest dove.
Curious stranger!  I belong
To the bard of Teian song;
With his mandate now I fly
To the nymph of azure eye;
Ah! that eye has madden’d many,
But the poet more than any!
Venus, for a hymn of love
Warbled to her votive grove
(‘T was in sooth a gentle lay)
Gave me to the bard away.

See me now his faithful minion;
Thus with softly-gliding pinion
To his lovely girl I bear
Songs of passion through the air.
Oft he blandly whispers me,
“Soon, my bird, I’ll set you free,”
But in vain he’ll bid me fly,
I shall serve him till I die.

Anacreon —Thomas Moore.