74 Shadowings 



It is especially in their poems upon the cicada 

 that we find the old Greeks confessing their 

 love of insect-melody : witness the lines in the 

 Anthology about the tettix caught in a spider's 

 snare, and " making lament in the thin fetters " 

 until freed by the poet; and the verses by 

 Leonidas of Tarentum picturing the " unpaid 

 minstrel to wayfaring men" as "sitting upon 

 lofty trees, warmed with the great heat of sum- 

 mer, sipping the dew that is like woman's 

 milk ; " and the dainty fragment of Melea- 

 ger, beginning : " Thou vocal tettix, drunk with 

 drops of dew, sitting with thy serrated limbs 

 upon the tops of petals, tbou givest out the 

 melody of the lyre from thy dusky skin." . . . 

 Or take the charming address of Evenus to a 

 nightingale : 



" Thou Attic maiden, honey-fed, hast chirp- 

 ing seized a chirping cicada, and bearest it to 

 thy unfledged young, tbou, a twitterer, the 

 twitterer, tbou, the winged, the well-winged, 

 tbou, a stranger, the stranger, tbou, a 

 summer -child, the summer-child! Wilt tbou 

 not quickly cast it from tbee ? For it is not 

 right, it is not just, that those engaged in song 



