"Yes; hour after hour I thought, 'now he must be coming.' Sometimes I
went into the garden in the morning and looked towards your home in the
East, and a bird flew towards me from thence and I felt a twitching in my
right eyelid; or when I was putting my box to rights and found the laurel
crown which I put by as a remembrance, because you looked so well in it,
--Melitta says such wreaths are good for keeping true love--then I used
to clap my hands with joy and think, 'to-day he must come;' and I would
run down to the Nile and wave my handkerchief to every passing boat, for
every boat I thought must be bringing you to me."

[A bird flying from the right side, and a twitching of the right eye
were considered fortunate omens. Theokrirus, III. 37]

"But you did not come, and then I went sadly home, and would sit down by
the fire on the hearth in the women's room, and sing, and gaze into the
fire till grandmother would wake me out of my dream by saying: 'Listen to
me, girl; whoever dreams by daylight is in danger of lying awake at
night, and getting up in the morning with a sad heart, a tired brain and
weary limbs. The day was not given us for sleep, and we must live in it
with open eyes, that not a single hour may be idly spent. The past
belongs to the dead; only fools count upon the future; but wise men hold
fast by the ever young present; by work they foster all the various gifts
which Zeus, Apollo, Pallas, Cypris lend; by work they raise, and perfect
and ennoble them, until their feelings, actions, words and thoughts
become harmonious like a well-tuned lute. You cannot serve the man
to whom you have given your whole heart,--to whom in your great love
you look up as so much higher than yourself--you cannot prove the
steadfastness and faithfulness of that love better, than by raising
and improving your mind to the utmost of your power. Every good and