Lover's Pendant Poem by Lindsay Smith

2009

Inspired by the Ancient Greek Epigramists,
Lucilius & Meleager

CHAEREMON
LUCILIUS

Borne up by a slight breeze,
Chaeremon floated through the clear air,
far lighter than chaff,
and probably would have gone spinning off through ether,
but that he caught his feet in a spider's web,
anddangled there on his back;
there he hung five nights and days,
and on the sixth came down by a strand of the web.


LOVE'S GARLAND
MELEAGER

I will twine the white violet
and I will twine the delicate narcissus with myrtle buds,
and I will twine laughing lilies,
and I will twine the sweet crocus,
and I will twine therewithal the crimson hyacinth,
and I will twine lovers' roses,
that on balsam-curled Heliodora's temples
my garland may shed its petals
over the lovelocks of her hair.