There is also a pretty little inscription, somewhat Anacreontic, by Marianus the Scholiast, on a warm spring.
Ταδ' ὑπο τας ρλατανους. κ. τ. λ.
Once Love within these shades was sleeping,
And gave his torch to the Naïads' keeping.
'Aha!' cried they, 'we'll quench its glow
Within our fountain's icy flow,
And, when its cruel fires cease,
The heart of man shall beat in peace.'
They plunged it in, but, all untamed,
The wondrous torch still brightly flamed,
And now these lovely nymphs must pour
A heated spring to yonder shore.
And here, in the compass of four lines, has Paul the Silentiary given a better eulogy to his sea-side garden than could be comprehended in a whole volume of modern descriptive poetry. He allows the imagination to wander at will among objects of its own creating, and to depict for itself the scene which he would not describe:
Ενθαδ' εριδμαινουσι, τινος πλεον επλετο χωρος,
Νυμφαι, Νηιαδες, Νηρεις, Αδρυαδες·
Ταις δε θεμιστευει μεσατη Χαρις, ουδε δικαζειν
Οιδεν, επει ξυνιν τερψιν ὁ χωρος εχει.
Here Dryads, Nymphs, and Nereids contend,
Which, to this spot, its chief attraction lend;
Beauty, in vain, their difference would accord,
Each to the scene such equal charms afford.
We will now give an inscription of Theocritus, in dedicating an humble rustic altar to Apollo:
Τα δροσοεντα τα ῥοδα. κ. τ. λ.
This bushy thyme and dewy roses
Are sacred to the immortal maids
Who dwell where Hippocrene discloses
Her fount, 'mid Heliconian shades.