Amores II.6

Our parrot, winged mimic from Indian land of dawn, is no more — come flocking, ye birds, to his obsequies! Come, all ye feathered faithful, come beat your breasts with the wing, and mark your tender cheeks with the rigid claw; let your ruffled plumage be rent in place of mourning hair, and in place of the long trumpet let your songs sound out! If you, Philomela, are lamenting the deed of the tyrant of Ismarus,a that lament has been fulfilled bv its term of years; turn aside to the hapless funeral of no common bird — great cause for grief is Itys, but belongs to the ancient past.

All ye who poise your flight in liquid air, O grieve — yet thou before all others, friendly turtledove! The life that you two shared was filled with all harmony; your loyalty was long and firm, and stood fast to the end. What the youth of Phocis was to Argive Orestes, this was the turtle-dove to you, O parrot, so long as fate allowed.

And yet, of what avail that loyalty, of what your rare and beauteous colour, of what that voice adept in mimicry of sounds, of what my darling's favour as soon as you were hers? — ah, hapless one, glory of birds, you surely are no more! You could dim with your wings the fragile jasper, and your beak was Punic-red with ruddy saffron tinge. On earth there was no bird could better imitate speech — you rendered words so well in your throaty tone!

'Twas envious fate swept you away — vou were no mover of battles fierce; you were a prattling lover of placid peace. Look! quails are ever battling with their kind; and perhaps 'tis the cause of their often living to old-wives' age. You were sated with very little; speech you loved so well that your beak had no time for many foods. A nut was your fare, and poppy-seeds brought you sleep, and drops of unmixed water drove away your thirst. The greedy vulture lives on, and the kite that traces circles through the air, and the daw, the harbinger of rain; the raven, too, hated by armour-bearing Minerva, lives on — it, at least, will hardly die after nine generations; the parrot, that loquacious image of the human voice, gift brought from the limit of the world, is no more! Best things are all too oft first swept away by the greedy hands of fate; the worse are suffered to fill out their tale of years. Thersites looked upon the sad funeral of him of Phylace, and Hector was ashes while yet his brothers lived.

Why call to mind the pious vows of my love in her fear for you — vows swept to sea by the gusty South? The seventh dawn came, that was not to bring another in its train, and Fate stood over you with distaff empty now. Yet the words were not silenced on your nerveless palate; your dying tongue cried out : " Corinna, fare you well! "

At the foot of a hill in Elysium is a leafy grove of dark ilex, and the moist earth is green with never-fading grass. If we may have faith in doubtful things, that place, we are told, is the abode of the pious winged kind, and from it impure fowl are kept away. There far and wide feed the harmless swans and the long-lived phoenix, bird ever alone of its kind; there the bird of Juno spreads for her own eye her plumage, and the winsome dove gives kisses to her eager mate. Our parrot, welcomed among them to this woodland seat, attracts to himself by his words the feathered faithful.

His bones are covered by a mound — mound such as fits his body's size — on which a scant stone bears a legend that just fits the space : —

" YOU MAY JUDGE FROM MY VERY MONUMENT MY MISTRESS LOVED ME WELL. I HAD A MOUTH WAS SKILLED IN SPEECH BEYOND A BIRD."