CUPID PROCLAIMED BY VENUS (Jacobs I. 27, xci. ̧.
Translated by Fawkes.

I'm in search of a Cupid that late went astray,
And stole from my bed with the dawn of the day.
His aspect is bold, his tongue never lies still,
And yet he can whine, and has tears at his will.
At human misfortunes he laughs and he sneers;
On his shoulders a quiver and pinions he wears:
"Tis unknown from what sire he deduces his birth;
'Tis not from the air, nor the sea, nor the earth;
For he's hated by all-but, good people, beware;
Perhaps for a heart he's now laying a snare-
Ha, ha, cunning Cupid, I see where you lie,
With your bow ready bent:-In Zenophila's eye.

The original of this beautiful epigram is an Idyllium of Moschus. Spenser has imitated it in the "Faerie Queene," Book III. Canto vi. 11, 12, but the passage is too long for insertion. Virgil, in his eighth Eclogue, tells something of Cupid's birth and infancy:

I know thee, Love; on mountains thou wast bred,

And Thracian rocks thy infant fury fed:
Hard-soul'd, and not of human progeny.

And Shakespeare, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (Act III. sc. 1), gives a quaint description of the character of the god :

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator, and great general

Of trotting paritors.

Congreve in his lines to "Amynta" has reproduced so exactly, that he must probably have remembered, the last few lines of Meleager's epigram:

Cruel Amynta, can you see

A heart thus torn, which you betray'd?

Love of himself ne'er vanquish'd me,

But through your eyes the conquest made.

In ambush there the traitor lay,

Where I was led by faithless smiles;

No wretches are so lost as they

Whom much security beguiles.

BEAUTY COMPARED WITH FLOWERS 'Jacobs I. 27, xcii.).

Translated by Shepherd.

The snowdrop peeps from every glade,
The gay narcissus proudly glows,
The lily decks the mountain shade,
Where blooms my fair-a blushing rose.
Ye meads! why vainly thus display
The buds that grace your vernal hour?
For see ye not my Zoë stray

Amidst your sweets, a sweeter flower?

A sentiment of similar character is expressed by Herrick, in a piece entitled, "The Parliament of Roses to Julia":

I dreamt the roses one time went

To meet and sit in Parliament:

The place for these, and for the rest
Of flowers, was thy spotlesse breast:
Over which a state was drawne
Of tiffanie, or cob-web lawne;
Then in that Parly, all those powers
Voted the rose, the queen of flowers,
But so, as that herself should be
The maide of honour unto thee.

ON A BEE THAT SETTLED ON THE NECK OF HIS
MISTRESS (Jacobs I. 31, cviii.).

Translated by C.

Thou flower-fed bee! Why leave the buds of spring
And to my lov'd-one's breast thy fond flight wing?
Is it to warn us, that Love tips his dart

With gall and honey for his victim's heart?

It is, it is! But go, light wanton, go!

The bitter truth you teach too well I know.

That love mingles gall with honey, Spenser tells us in the "Faërie Queene," Book IV. Canto x. 1:

True he it said, whatever man it sayd,

That love with gall and hony doth abound:
But if the one be with the other wayd,
For every dram of hony therein found,
A pound of gall doth over it redound:
That I too true by triall have approved.

William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, a poet nearly contemporary with Spenser, expresses the same truth in a line in his first madrigal : Sweet hony love with gall doth mixe.

A modern anonymous epigram, in Hackett's "Collection of Select Epigrams," 1757, Ep. 62, tells of the sting as well as the sweets of love: To heal the wound a bee had made

Upon my Delia's face,

Its honey to the part she laid,

And bade me kiss the place:

Pleas'd, I obey'd, and from the wound
Suck'd both the sweet and smart;

The honey on my lips I found,

The sting within my heart.

ON THE PEDESTAL OF THE MARBLE STATUE OF N10BE (Jacobs I. 34, cxvii.).

Translated by C.

Hail, Niobe! Unbind thy braided hair!
To thee I come, the prophet of despair.
I see thy sons, a manly offspring, lie
Pierc'd by th' avenging archers of the sky.
All, all are dead. Yet darker visions rise,

Young, blood-stain'd virgins scathe these aching eyes.
One at thy feet, a guiltless daughter, falls;

One on thy knees death's withering shaft appals:
E'en she thy late-born dies, untimely slain,

She at thy breast, thy last! for none remain.

Amaz'd, and mute the grief-struck mother stood,
Erewhile too fond of speech, but now subdued.
Benumbing horror froze the starting tear,
And fix'd her lovely form in marble here.

Niobe's children were destroyed by Apollo and Diana, in revenge for insults which she offered to their mother Latona. Struck at the suddenness of her misfortunes, she was changed into a stone. The marble statue, on the pedestal of which these noble lines were written, was executed by Praxiteles, and was so perfect as a work of art, that Niobe seemed to be again alive. This gave occasion to the following epigram by an unknown author (Jacobs IV. 181, cçxcviii.):

To stone the gods had chang'd her-but in vain ;
The sculptor's art has made her breathe again.

The story of Niobe is given in the 24th Book of Homer's Iliad. The reference to the rock-cut monument of her in the valley of the Hermus is thus translated by Pope:

There high on Sipylus's shaggy brow,

She stands her own sad monument of woe;
The rock for ever lasts, the tears for ever flow.

PHILODEMUS.

Flourished about B.C. 80.

He was by birth a Gadarene, but

migrated to Athens, and thence to Rome.

MUSIC AND LOVE (Jacobs II. 73, xiii.).

Translated by Merivale.

The strains that flow from young Aminta's lyre,
Her tongue's soft voice, and melting eloquence,
Her sparkling eyes, that glow with fond desire,
Her warbling notes, that chain the admiring sense,
Subdue my soul-I know not how nor whence.
Too soon it will be known when all my soul's on fire.

So, Herrick "Upon Sapho sweetly playing, and sweetly singing":
When thou do'st play, and sweetly sing,
Whether it be the voice or string,

Or both of them, that do agree

Thus to en-trance and ravish me:

This, this I know, I'm oft struck mute;

And die away upon thy lute.

The epigram of Philodemus may perhaps be the original of Hughes' pretty lines, "Beauty and Music":

Ye swains, whom radiant beauty moves,

Or music's art with sounds divine,

Think how the rapturous charm improves,
Where two such gifts celestial join.
Where Cupid's bow and Phoebus' lyre,
In the same powerful hand are found,
Where lovely eyes inflame desire,

While trembling notes are taught to wound.
Inquire not who's the matchless fair,
That can this double death bestow;
If young Harmonia's strains you hear,
Or view her eyes too well you'll know.

A LAMENT (Jacobs II. 78, xxx.).

Translated by C.

The bean-flower is in blossom, and the rose,

The spring-kail gather'd, the crisp parsley blows;
The crackling shell-fish serv'd, the salt cheese prest,
And cut the milky lettuce for the feast.-

Yet tread we not the shore, th' accustom'd hill,
And mountain heights miss our known footsteps still.
Two babes, last morn, who play'd in life's young bloom,
On this, we bore for burial to the tomb.

This beautiful lament was addressed by some bereaved parents to one Sosulus, giving the reason for their absence from a festivity on the sea-shore, for which everything had been prepared.

ARCHIAS.

Flourished about B.C. 80. He was the preceptor and friend of Cicero.
THRACIAN VIEW OF LIFE AND DEATH (Jacobs II. 88, xxxi.).
Translated by Bland.

Thracians who howl around an infant's birth,
And give the funeral hour to songs and mirth!
Well in your grief and gladness are express'd,
That life is labour, and that death is rest.

So, Esop, the Fabulist, as early as the middle of the sixth century before the Christian era, wrote (Jacobs I. 52, first part of Epigram, translated by Bland):

Who, but for death, could find repose
From life, and life's unnumber'd woes,
From ills that mock our art to cure,
As hard to fly as to endure?

Owen, the Cambro-Briton, argues that death is better than life (Book III. 192). The Latin is thus translated by Hayman:

We cry, being born; from thence thus argue I,

If to be born be bad, 'tis good to die.

Lear says ("King Lear," Act IV. sc. 6):

When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.