Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/119

Rh repeat Cory's imitation of the elegiacs of Callimachus on his friend Heracleitus:—

This, to be sure, is a paraphrase, yet it conveys the feeling better than the more compact version by the poet-scholar Andrew Lang. Nothing can exceed, in its expression of the spirit, Mr. Lang's handling of Meleager's verses to the memory of his loved and lost Heliodora:—

But I quote no more of this melody, since you can find it, in a certain romance of "Cleopatra," shining by contrast with much of that story like the "jewel in an Ethiope's ear." Others of Mr. Lang's elusive, exquisite renderings, done as it seems by the first touch, are incomparable with any lyrical exploits of their kind since "Music's wing" was folded in the dust of Shelley.

Follow the twilight path of elegiac verse to the Alexandrian epoch, and you find the clear Athenian strain succeeded by a compound of artifice and