Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/193

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Ah! the pity of it! Thou

Poor Bird! thy doing 'tis that now

My Loved One's eyes are swollen and red

With weeping for her darling dead."

Almost as pathetic, and quite as musical as this melancholy dirge, are some of the epigrams to be found in that charming volume of translations from the Greek Anthology, which Lilla Cabot Perry has aptly entitled From the Garden of Hellas. Here we have graceful and tender verses dedicated to the memory of pet beasts and birds and insects, one of them, indeed, bewailing the hard fate of a locust and a cicada, which, beloved by the same mistress, sleep, equally lamented, side by side:

What can be prettier than such a requiem sung by Leonidas, and breathing in every line a