Here lines three and four are lines one and two read backward. Other examples are less elaborate, but show the same spirit, the same foolish playing with words. From such things as this no new life could be infused into poetry, and most of the verses preserved to us from the second and even the third centuries after Christ are little more than feeble echoes of the distant music of Virgil. Nevertheless there are already indications of the new mediæval spirit, which was not to find its full development until the days of the minnesinger and the troubadours. The Pervigilium Veneris. Whether the Pervigilium Veneris (Night-watch of Venus) belongs to the second century or the third is not certain. At any rate it is the most striking early example of the romantic sentiment peculiar to mediæval and modern times. The poem is written for the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, whose worship was revived and encouraged by Hadrian. It is therefore probable that it belongs to the second century. It consists of ninety-three trochaic septenarii (the rhythm of Tennyson’s Locksley Hall), a verse freely used by the early Latin poets, but hardly to be found in the first century after Christ. At irregular intervals the refrain:
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet,[130]
is repeated. In the beginning of the poem,
Ver novum; ver iam canorum; vere natus est Iovis;
Vere concordant amores; vere nubunt alites,[131]
may well have suggested to Tennyson the lines:
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.