reader his passion is too sensuous and his erudition too obtrusive; but the genuine feeling expressed makes his poems beautiful in spite of occasional coarseness and constant display of mythological learning. Propertius is remarkable for the sonorous richness of his lines, and in the technical execution of his verse he is careful and accurate. His earlier poems admit words of three and four syllables at the end of the pentameter without scruple, but in the later poems the pentameter usually ends with a word of two syllables, showing that Propertius was disposed to follow Ovid’s rule in this particular. Like other Roman poets, Propertius is professedly an imitator of the Greeks. Those whom he claims to imitate especially are Callimachus and Philetas, both poets of the Alexandrian period. One of the shortest of his poems, free alike from coarseness and display of learning, is the following, on Cynthia’s absence: Why ceaselessly my fancied sloth upbraid, As still at conscious Rome by love delay’d? Wide as the Po from Hypanis is spread The distance that divides her from my bed. No more with fondling arms she folds me round, Nor in my ear her dulcet whispers sound. Once I was dear; nor e’er could lover burn With such a tender and a true return. Yes—I was envied—hath some god above Crush’d me? or magic herb that severs love, Gather’d on Caucasus, bewitch’d my flame? Nymphs change by distance; I’m no more the same. Oh, what a love has fleeted like the wind, And left no vestige of its trace behind! Now sad I count the ling’ring nights alone; And my own ears are startled by my groan. Happy! the youth who weeps, his mistress nigh; Love with such tears has mingled ecstasy: Blest, who, when scorned, can change his passing heat; The pleasures of translated bonds are sweet. I can no other love; nor hence depart; For Cynthia, first and last, is mistress of my heart.[74]