These twain, her cherished playthings, from the grave.”
What can be prettier than such a requiem sung by Leonidas, and breathing in every line a 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” playthings, was fain to sing with the same ready sympathy and the same charming grace the praises of Philænida’s pet locust, loved and lost:
“What if small, O passer-by,
Be this stone! ’tis mine you see.
What if it you scarce descry!
Philænida gave it me.
“Praise her that she held me dear,
Me, her little locust, singing,
Whether in the stubble here
Or amid the bushes winging.