Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/34

22 It only needs to compare this delicate and musical piece, and the subtle infusion of its (in the original) tender diminutives, with Ovid's "On the Death of a Parrot," in which the parrot is very secondary to its mistress, and we shall discern the elements of popularity which made it a household word up to the time of Juvenal, and still preserve it as a trial-ground for neatness and finish in translators.

But soon we find a song that gives a note of progress in Lesbia's good graces. A sense of enjoyment and abandon animates the strain in which Catullus pleads for licence to love his fill, on the ground that to-morrow death may terminate the brief reign of fruition. In sharp contrast with the heyday of present joy he sets the drear prospect which had made itself felt in the poem last quoted; but now it is as an incentive to "living while we may:"—

The moral, or conclusion, is not that which commends itself to faith or hope; but the pagan mind of the erotic poets delighted, as we may see in Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, also in the contrast of now and then—the gay brightness of the passing hour with the dark shadow looming in the background—and drew from it no profounder suggestion than—love and kisses! In the rationale or arithmetic of these, Catullus shows himself an adept. In the piece just quoted