Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/194

 190 sentiment half natural, half assumed! We look back into the past, and smile, but with no unfeeling mirth, to see the tiny tomb with its cold and silent inmates whose shrill, amorous music is hushed for evermore. Nor were they alone in their sad distinction, for on every side other deserving insects were as decorously interred, and as tunefully bewailed. The poet who mourned for the "maiden Myro's" play-things, was fain to sing with the same ready sympathy and the same charming grace the praises of Philænida's pet locust, loved and lost:

Another epigram by Mnasalcas bewails a