Again he calls him ἁβροπέδιλος ἔρως (delicate-sandalled Love) and fashions words like ψυχαπάτης, ὑπναπάτης (soul-cheating and sleep-cheating), to express the qualities of the treacherous god. In some of his metaphorical descriptions of passion he displays a really fervid imagination. To this class of creation belong the poem on the Soul's thirst (ii. 414), on the memory of beauty that lives like a fiery image in the heart (ii. 413), and the following splendid picture of the tyranny of Love. He is addressing his Soul, who has once again incautiously been trapped by Eros:
τί μάτην ἐνὶ δεσμοῖς
σπαίρεις; αὐτὸς ἔρως τὰ πτερά σου δέδεκεν,
καί σ' ἐπὶ πῦρ ἔστησε, μύροις δ' ἔρρανε λιπόπνουν,
δῶκε δὲ διψώσῃ δάκρυα θερμὰ πιεῖν.[220]
Surely a more successful marriage of romantic fancy to classic form was never effected even by a modern poet. This line again contains a bold and splendid metaphor:
κωμάζω δ' οὐκ οἶνον ὑπὸ φρένα πῦρ δὲ γεμισθείς.[221]
Meleager had a soul that inclined to all beautiful and tender things. Having described the return of spring in a prolonged chant of joy, he winds up with words worthy of a troubadour on Minnesinger in the April of a new age:
πῶς οὐ χρὴ καὶ ἀοιδὸν ἐν εἴαρι καλὸν ἀεῖσαι;[222]
The cicada, δροσεραῖς σταγόνεσσι μεθυσθείς (drunken with honey-drops of dew), the αὐτοφυὲς μίμημα λύρας (nature's own mimic of the lyre)—a conceit, by the way, in the style of Marini or of Calderon—the bee whom he addresses as ἀνθοδίαιτε μέλισσα (flower-pasturing bee), and all the flowers for which he has found exquisite epithets, the φίλομβρος νάρκισσος (narcissus that loves the rain of heaven), the φιλέραστα ῥόδα (roses to lovers dear), the οὐρεσίφοιτα κρίνα (lilies that roam the mountain-sides), and again τὰ γελῶντα κρίνα (laughing lilies), testify to the passionate love and to the purity of heart with which he greeted and studied the simplest beauties of the world.[223] In dealing with flowers he is particularly felicitous. Most exquisite are the lines in which he describes his garland of the Greek poets and assigns to each some favorite of the garden or the field, and again those other couplets which compare the boys of Tyre to a bouquet culled by love for Aphrodite. Βαιὰ μὲν ἀλλὰ ῥόδα (slight things perhaps, but roses): these are the words in which Meleager describes the too few but precious verses of Sappho, and for his own poetry they have a peculiar propriety. Τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀήδονες, (thy nightingales still live) we may say, quoting Callimachus, when we take leave of him. His poetry has the sweetness and the splendor of the rose, the rapture and full-throated melody of the nightingale.
Next in artistic excellence to Meleager among the amatory poets is Straton, a Greek of Sardis, who lived in the second century. But there are few readers who, even for the sake of his pure and perfect language, will be prepared to put up with the immodesty of his subject-matter. Straton is not so delicate and subtle in style as Meleager; but he has a masculine vigor and netteté of phrase peculiar to himself. It is not possible to quote many of his epigrams. He suffers the neglect which necessarily obscures those men of genius who misuse their powers. Yet the story of the garland-weaver (ii. 396), and the address to schoolmasters (ii. 219), are too clever to be passed by without notice. The following epigram on a picture of Ganymede gives a very fair notion of Straton's style (ii. 425):
στεῖχε πρὸς αἰθέρα δῖον, ἀπέρχεο παῖδα κομίζων
αἰετέ, τὰς διφυεῖς ἐκπετάσας πτέρυγας,
στεῖχε τὸν ἁβρὸν ἔχων Γανυμήδεα, μηδὲ μεθείης
τὸν Διὸς ἡδίστων οἰνοχόον κυλίκων·
φείδεο δ' αἱμάξαι κοῦρον γαμψώνυχι ταρσῷ
μὴ Ζεὺς ἀλγήσῃ τοῦτο βαρυνόμενος.[224]
To this may be added an exhortation to pleasure in despite of death (ii. 288).[225]