or with a hyacinth growing in some rich man's garden. Like the eager lover of beauty among our own poets, he sees in other flowers—
Alba parthenice velut
Luteumve papaver—
the symbol of maidens—
'Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale.'
The grace of trees and the bloom of flowers were prized by him among the fairest things in Nature. The charm in woman which most moves his imagination is virgin innocence unfolding into love, or passion ennobled by truth and constancy of affection. So too, in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, he compares Ariadne in her maidenhood to the myrtle trees growing on the banks of Eurotas, and to the bloom of vernal flowers:—
Quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtos
Aurave distinctos educit verna colores.[603]
In this Ode he expresses not merely, as in the Acme and Septimius, his sympathy with the joy of the hour. He recognises in marriage a greater good than in the love for a mistress. He associates it with thoughts of the power and security of the household, of the pure happiness of parental love, of the continuance of a time-honoured name, and of the birth of new defenders of the State.
The charm of the poem does not arise from its tone of feeling and its clear ringing melody alone. The bright spirit of the day awakens the inward eye which creates pictures and images of beauty in harmony with itself. The poet sees Hymenaeus coming from the distant rocks of Helicon, robed in saffron, and wreathed with fragrant amaracus, in radiant power and glory, chanting the song with his ringing voice, beating the ground with his foot, shaking the pine-torch in his hand. As the doors of the house are opened, and the bride is expected by the singers outside, by one vivid flash of imagination he reveals all their eager excitement—