That wrought of old such images, as made the marble breathe delight?

Who now shall forge the ambrosial hair, the burning glance of Melité,

Or teach the carven stone how fair the splendours of her bosom be?

Brave sculptors! would that it were mine to bid you at a lover's nod

For such a beauty raise a shrine, as for the statue of a god!

And of Meleager (v. 57):—

XXI.

Love, if swimming in thy light ofttimes burnt the soul

shall be,

Swiftly will she take her flight: cruel, she is winged like thee!

Here is a very characteristic one (v. 182):

XXII.

Say to Lycanis, Dorcas, what you're bid.

Your love's proved false false love can't long be hid.
Tell her So, Dorcas-see! and then again

A second and a third time, Dorcas, plain.
Run, don't delay, but fly! stay-Dorcas-stay!
Don't hurry, Dorcas, till I've said my say.

Add to the former words (that's foolish! no.)
Say nothing then, but this—yes, all. Now go.

Be sure and tell her all. But why send you,
Dorcas - when here I am and coming too?

This is the perfection of fancy — it is one of a series which I wish I could include (v. 152):

XXIII.

Fly for me, gnat, my swiftest messenger,
And touch my lady's ear,
Whispering this:

' He waits thee, waking, but thou sleepest yet.

Ah! thoughtless, to forget

Thy votaries!'

Fly to her, singing gnat, oh fly to her!

Yet softly call her, softly, lest he hear
And wake, who sleeps too near,
And all my gains

Be jealous blows. But an thou fetch her me,
A lion's skin to thee,

Gnat, for thy pains,

And a club will I give, in hand to bear.

Could anything be more delicate than that— the notion of dressing a gnat in the attributes of Herakles after his feat of bringing the love to the lover? That at least has not come down to us along the centuries in every poet's song. It is unique, a little orchid in the Greek garden of flowers. But the next has a truer note of feeling (v. 174):·

XXIV.

Now sleeps my lady, like a gentle flower-
O that I were as sleep without his wing,
Across her eyelids there!

So not even he that on Zeus' eyes hath power
Should share with me the sweet companioning
That I should get of her.

Ah now remember! yes, now remember
How this good word in the good days I said:
'Beauty is sweetest-beauty is fleetest,
Not the swiftest bird in air

Is a swifter passenger.'

Lo! now to earth your beauty flowers are shed!

That is a chrysanthemum indeed

- a golden

flower, fit winter gathering in the Greek garden. And this of passion (v. 215):

XXVI.

I pray thee, Love, for sake of my poor song
To put to sleep this sleepless love of mine!
Yea for they will not learn

those arrows thine

To smite another, but they do me wrong
Winging their flight for ever at only me.

What though thou slay me? I shall leave this line
Written, whereof the sound shall echo long:
'Here lies, whose murder was of Love's cruelty.'

But of all that the prince of love-poets did there is nothing that equals this. I have not been quite literal here. Scholars will know why I need handle it delicately, and it tells its own tale of longing (xii. 125).

XXVII.

Love brought by night a vision to my bed,
One that still wore the vesture of a child
But eighteen years of age- who sweetly smiled
Till of the lovely form false hopes were bred
And keen embraces wild.

Ah! for the lost desire that haunts me yet,

Till mine eyes fail in sleep that finds no more That fleeting ghost! Oh lovelorn heart, give o'erCease thy vain dreams of beauty's warmth - forget

The face thou longest for!

All through the Anthology there is nothing rings truer than that. Again I have begun and ended with Meleager, but this section was his special sphere, his share in the epitaphs being, though noble, comparatively small.

1 [" You never loved me, and yet to save me,
One unforgetable night you gave me
Such chill embraces as the snow-covered heights
Receive from clouds, in northern, Auroral nights.
Such keen communion as the frozen mere

Has with immaculate moonlight, cold and clear.
And all desire,

Like failing fire,

Died slowly, faded surely, and sank to rest

Against the delicate chillness of your breast."

A modern parallelism, one of a series of love lyrics from India as "arranged in verse by Mr. Laurance Hope in The Garden of Kama, 1902.]

The first of these

the epitaphs of friend

ship and love-is Plato's for Aster, finely done by Shelley, of which I write the mere English:

XXVIII.

As morning star to man thy light was shed

As evening star thou shinest for the dead!

And then follows one of the only two Mr. Wright gives of Meleager's:

XXIX.

Tears, lady, though thou lie beneath the earth,

The little Love has left for Death, I shed

Tears, bitter tears, o'er thy lamented head,
Poor tribute of my heart and my heart's dearth.
Heavily, heavily, my dear - my dead! —
In vain to Acheron I mourn thy worth;

Ah! where's the stem that gave my longing birth?
Now Death hath torn-hath torn it from its bed.
Yea, dust hath stained my floweret at her best;

I pray thee, mother earth, that tenderly
Thou gather her whom all we weep to thee-
And fold her gently, mother, to thy breast.

That is what he wrote for his sun-maiden,

as I called her in the toast.

The next is by

1 ["Thou wert the Morning Star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled ;

Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead."]