Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/124

112 but the poet has abandoned his professed unconcern, and, in his distraction at lengthened separation, describes himself in a bad way:—

He descends from his vantage-ground of complaint, and makes a plenary recantation, enumerating at the same time arguments of services rendered, such as nursing her through a long and serious illness, and consulting enchantresses and approaching altars with a view to her recovery. Fondly, he adds, he had dreamed that the first-fruits of this would be the return of her attachment, a reconciliation which would enable him to carry out a scheme of rural happiness for the rest of their lives on his estate at Pedum, in which each should perform their appropriate household duties, and Delia's province should be undisputed rule over all the slaves born in the house, himself included as the merest cipher. She was to discharge votive offerings to the rural god, to pay tithe and first-fruit for the folds and crops, and, when the conquering hero Messala deigned to visit their retreat, to pluck him the sweetest apples from the choicest trees, and herself to wait upon him with a befitting banquet. The pretty domestic picture includes a vision of teeming baskets of grapes, and the same vats of pressed must which we read of in the ballad of Horatius as foaming "round the white feet of laughing girls." But, sighs Tibullus, this fancy sketch has come to