Page:Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius.djvu/82

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The poem concludes with a prayer that mother and child may realise the fame and virtues of Penelope and Telemachus, and well deserves the credit it has ever enjoyed as a model in its kind.

Of the second of Catullus's Nuptial Songs—an hexameter poem in amœbæan or responsive strophes and antistrophes, supposed to be sung by the choirs of youths and maidens who attended the nuptials, and whom, in the former hymn, the poet had been exhorting to their duties, whereas here they come in turn to their proper function—no really trustworthy history is to be given, though one or two commentators propound that it was a sort of brief for the choruses, written to order on the same occasion for which the poet had written, on his own account, the former nuptial hymn. But the totally different style and structure forbid the probability of this, although both are remarkable poems of their kind. This one, certainly, has a ringing freshness about it, and seems to cleave the shades of nightfall with a réveillé singularly rememberable. The youths of the bridegroom's company have left him at the rise of the evening star, and gone forth for the hymenæal chant from the tables at which they have been feasting. They recognise the bride's approach as a signal to strike up the hymenæal. Hereupon the maidens who have accompanied