tone of Battus's song in the tenth idyl -


'White thou art not, thou art not golden haired,
Thou art brown, and gracious, and meet for love.'


Here is a longer love-ditty -

'I will begin by telling thee first of thy perfections: thy body is
as fair as an angel's; no painter could design it. And if any man be
sad, he has but to look on thee, and despite himself he takes
courage, the hapless one, and his heart is joyous. Upon thy brows
are shining the constellated Pleiades, thy breast is full of the
flowers of May, thy breasts are lilies. Thou hast the eyes of a
princess, the glance of a queen, and but one fault hast thou, that
thou deignest not to speak to me.'

Battus might have cried thus, with a modern Greek singer, to the
shade of the dead Amaryllis (Idyl IV), the 'gracious Amaryllis,
unforgotten even in death' -

'Ah, light of mine eyes, what gift shall I send thee; what gift to
the other world? The apple rots, and the quince decayeth, and one by
one they perish, the petals of the rose! I send thee my tears bound
in a napkin, and what though the napkin burns, if my tears reach thee
at last!'

The difficulty is to stop choosing, where all the verses of the
modern Greek peasants are so rich in Theocritean memories, so ardent,