My weight of sleepless care to drive away;
Your love-beguiling tune to me now play,
Striking your prattling wings with your dear feet.
In early morning I’ll bring gifts to you
Of garlic ever fresh and drops of dew.”
There is an exquisite description in the first Idyl of Theocritus of a deep bowl of ivy wood, the gift of a goatherd to the singer Thyrsis, on which is carved, among other pastoral scenes, a boy weaving a locust cage while he guards the vineyard from the foxes. Just such a dainty toy he weaves as may well have been the habitation of those luxurious and thrice-favored insects, the petted captives of Myro and fair Philænida:
“Now divided but a little space from the sea-worn old man is a vineyard laden well with fire-red clusters, and on the rough wall a little lad watches the vineyard, sitting there. Round him two she-foxes are skulking, and one goes along the vine rows to devour the ripe grapes, and the other brings all her cunning to bear against the scrip, and vows she will never leave the lad till she strand him bare and breakfastless. But the boy is plaiting a pretty locust cage with stalks of asphodel, and fitting it with reeds; and less care of his scrip has he, or of the vines, than delight in his plaiting.”[3]
Kids and lambs are pastoral playthings which the rustic lovers of Theocritus delight in offering to their fair ones; and in the Vth Idyl Comatus complains to Lacon that he has given a bird to Alcippe and won from her no kiss in return. Whereupon Lacon, in the true spirit of amorous boastfulness, protests that he gave but a shepherd’s pipe to his maiden, and sweetly she kissed and caressed him. A great hound, strong enough to strangle wolves, a mixing bowl wrought by the hand of Praxiteles, a vessel of cypress wood, a soft fleece from the newly shorn ewe, and a brooding ring-dove are among the presents offered by these shepherds in generous rivalry at the shrine of love.
But by far the most winning pet whose memory has come down to us enshrined in Greek verse is the little wildwood hare, cherished by a young girl, and sung by the poet Meleager. Gentler and more affectionate than Cowper’s sturdy favorites, it shares with them a modest fame, a quiet corner in the long gallery of prized and honored beasts. To those who have loved Tiney and Puss from childhood, it is a pleasure to see by their side this shrinking stranger, this poor little overfed, much-caressed darling whose race was quickly run:
“From my mother’s teats they tore me,