ydia to the dance.
They on the verdant level graceful mov'd
In vary'd measures; while the cooling breeze
Beneath their swelling garments wanton'd o'er
Their snowy breasts, and smooth Cayster's streams
Soft-gliding murmur'd by. The hostile blade, &c. Bk. VIII.

And here is a pleasing expansion of Pindar, Olymp. II. 109:

Placid were his days,
Which flow'd through blessings. As a river pure,
Whose sides are flowery, and whose meadows fair,
Meets in his course a subterranean void;
There dips his silver head, again to rise,
And, rising, glide through flow'rs and meadows new;
So shall Oileus in those happier fields,
Where never tempests roar, nor humid clouds
In mists dissolve, nor white descending flakes
Of winter violate th' eternal green;
Where never gloom of trouble shades the mind,
Nor gust of passion heaves the quiet breast,
Nor dews of grief are sprinkled. Bk. X. S.C.

He told us that he had read Milton, in a prose translation, when he was
fourteen.[228] I understood him thus myself, and W--- interpreted
Klopstock's French as I had already construed it. He appeared to know
very little of Milton or indeed of our poets in general. He spoke with
great indignation of the English prose translation of his MESSIAH. All
the translations had been bad, very bad--but the English was _no_
translation--there were pages on pages not in the original: and half the
original was not to be found in the translation. W--- told him that I
intended to translate a few of his odes as specimens of German
lyrics--he then said to me in English, 'I wish you would render into
English some select passages of THE MESSIAH, and _revenge_ me of your
countryman!'

[228] This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman
at Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bed-fellow. Among
other boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a particular
value on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always slept with it
under his pillow.

It was the liveliest thing which he produced in the whole conversation.
He told us, that his first ode was fifty years older than his last. I
looked at him with much emotion--I considered him as the venerable
father of German poetry; as a good man as a Christian; seventy-four
years old; with legs enormously swollen; yet active, lively, cheerful,
and kind, and communic