Two on Zenophila

 

In the Anthology these two poems are AP 5.174 and 171. Headlam invents his own numbering system, reordering the poems to imply a life-story in which Meleager moves on from one romantic prospect to the next, making a clean break each time. Zenophila is his first love; then Timarion, who is not a boy! honestly! Last comes the great and defining love of the poet's life as the Victorians liked to imagine it: Heliodora.

The translations are faithful enough, though padded. Some of the rhymes set my teeth on edge.

VII

Zenophile, my tender bloom,
thou sleepest. Oh the guise
of gliding slumber to assume
and enter on thine eyes!

That thereby might not even he
have unto thee access
who lulls the lids of Zeus, but thee
I only might possess. 

VII

The cup in bliss rejoiceth much
because, so boasteth he,
'tis his the prattling mouth to touch
of sweet Zenophile.

O happy cup, to be so quaffed!
would she her lips might strain
to my lips now, and at a draught
the soul within me drain!