Drink, luckless lover! Thy heart's fiery rage
Bacchus who gives oblivion shall assuage:
Drink deep, and while thou drain'st the brimming bowl,
Drive love's dark anguish from thy fevered soul.
Two of these little compositions deal with the old comparison between love and the sea. In the first, the lover's journey is likened to a comfortless voyage, where the house of the beloved will be for him safe anchorage after the storm:
Cold blows the winter wind: 'tis Love,
Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears,
That bears me to thy doors, my love,
Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears.
Cold blows the blast of aching Love;
But be thou for my wandering sail,
Adrift upon these waves of love,
Safe harbor from the whistling gale!
In the second, love itself is likened to the ocean, always shifting, never to be trusted:
My love is like an April storm
Upon a false and fickle sea:
One day you shine, and sunny warm
Are those clear smiles you shower on me;
Next day from cloudy brows you rain
Your anger on the ruffled main.
Around me all the deeps are dark;
I whirl and wander to and fro,
Like one who vainly steers his bark
Mid winds that battle as they blow:—
Then raise the flag of love or hate,
That I at last may know my fate!
The peculiar distinction of Meleager's genius gives its special quality to the following dedication, in which the poet either is, or feigns himself to be, made captive by Love upon first landing in a strange country:
The Lady of desires, a goddess, gave
My soul to thee;
To thee soft-sandalled Love hath sent, a slave,
Poor naked me:
A stranger on a stranger's soil, tight-bound
With bands of steel:—
I do but pray that we may once be found
Firm friends and leal!