Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/179

Rh bones." We have slight data as to the fulfilment of this prophecy—none, in fact, except the tradition of his early death. It is pleasant to assume that his latter years were free from the distractions, heart-aches, and recklessness of his youth, and that, as time sped, he wrapt himself more and more in the cultivation of loftier themes of song, inspired by stirring history and divine philosophy. And yet, the world of song would have lost no little had Cynthia's charms not bidden him attune his lyre to erotic subjects, and taught him how powerful "for the delineation of the master-passion in its various phases of tenderness, ecstasy, grief, jealousy, and despair, was the elegiac instrument, which he wielded with a force, earnestness, pathos, and originality most entirely his own."