Silvae II.4 (Mozley): Melior’s Parrot

Parrot, prince of birds, glib-tongued favourite of thy master, parrot that cleverly dost mimic human speech, who has cut short thy chatter by so sudden a stroke? Yesterday, hapless one, thou didst join our feast, though doomed to die, and we saw thee plucking the dainties of the table and moving from couch to couch till after midnight. Greetings also and well-conned words hadst thou repeated. But now that minstrelsy hath Lethe’s eternal silence for its portion. Let the well-known tale of Phaethon give place: ’tis not only swans that sing their coming death.

But how spacious was thy house, how bright its gleaming dome! and the row of silver bars, joined with ivory, and the gate that echoed shrill at the touch of thy beak, and the doors that to-day speak their own complaint! Empty is that happy cage, and silent the chattering of that lordly abode.

Flock hither all ye scholar fowl, to whom Nature has given the noble privilege of speech; let the bird of Phoebus beat his breast, and the starling, that repeats by heart the sayings it has heard, and magpies transformed in the Aonian contest, and the partridge, that joins and reiterates the words it echoes, and the sister that laments forlorn in her Bistonian bower: mourn all together and bear your dead kinsman to the flames, and learn all of you this piteous dirge:

“The parrot, glory and renown of all the airy tribe, green monarch of the East, is dead: whom neither the bird of Juno with jewelled tail, nor the fowl of icy Phasis, nor those whereon the Numidians prey beneath the moist southern sky, could surpass in beauty. Once he saluted kings and spoke the name of Caesar, was now a sympathetic friend, now a gay companion of the board, so skilful was he to render the words he had been taught! Never wert thou solitary, beloved Melior, when he was set free. But not ingloriously is he sent to the shades: his ashes are rich with Assyrian balm, and the frail feathers breathe incense of Arabia and Sicanian saffron; and he will mount a fragrant pyre, a happier Phoenix, free from the weary languor of old age.”