Headlam welcomes his poet

Headlam's intro is of interest. His title page dedicates his translation to his slightly older contemporary and fellow Cambridge classicist, Hugh Vibart MacNaghten, just as (he goes on to say) Meleager had offered his Garland to his own 'friend' Diocles (MacNaghten, a big name at Eton, never married). And he begins with a sweet verse encomium:

With whatsoever skill is ours
we Meleager praise,
the amorous nature, fond of flowers,
the master of sweet phrase:

We Meleager praise, that well
of unkind Love's despite
could tell in song, in song could tell
of kindly Love's delight

Foreign of race are we, that own
too harsh a voice to sing,
music of more entrancing tone,
to praise him, borrowing.

And yet no stranger he, nor dead,
for him among all men
the Muses have established
a deathless denizen.

The last stanza is a shout-out a famous self-epitaph (one of several) in which Meleager declares his cosmopolitanism, AP 7.417. Here are the relevant lines of my own translation of it:

And what surprise, good friend who passes by,
If MELEAGER is a Syrian?
For we are citizens of all the world;
It is one nation, and the same expanse
Gives birth to all of us...

I recall how bittersweet it was to translate from Meleager for the World's Classics as my own nation turned its back on community with its neighbours. More on Headlam's introductory matter another time.