Overview
Odes 1.23, also known as Ad Chloen ('To Chloe'), or by its incipit, , is one of the Odes of Horace. The poem is written in the fourth Asclepiadean metre, and is of uncertain date; not after 23 BC.
Summary
You shun me like a timid fawn (inuleus) that seeks its dam on the trackless mountain and trembles at the rustling bramble or the darting lizard (1–8). I am not a tiger or lion going to eat you. I'll do you no harm. Cease to cling to your mother. You are ripe for a mate (9–12).
Analysis
Clifford Herschel Moore (1902) thinks this poem is a study from a Greek original; possibly from Anacreon's verses, of which we have a fragment (no. 51), which includes the same comparison of the girl to a fawn: "Gently as a new-born fawn unweaned, which quivers from terror, when left in the wood by its antlered mother."
Reception
Cf. Dobson's roundel: "You shun me, Chloe, wild and shy, / As some stray fawn that seeks its mother". For difference between 1st century and 19th century feeling, cf. Landor's "Gracefully shy is yon Gazelle". 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."
Bibliography
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