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The shrew-mouse had the rest of the day to dance, play, and amuse himself, listen to the roundelays and ballads which the poets composed in his honour, play the lute and the mandore, make acrostics, eat, drink and be merry. In every corner mice were making merry. Everywhere there were dances, concerts, banquets, sarabands, music, joyous songs, and epithalamia.
The poets of Rome, the Porcaro, the Mellini, Inghirami, and Evangelista Maddaleni, probably composed these pieces, and they may also have taken part in them, for it was many years since Rome had been given such a brilliant opportunity to show her progress in histrionics. Lucretia was showered with sonnets and epithalamia.
The different sketches of Auruneuleia as the loving bride, the chaste matron, and the aged grandame nodding kindly to everybody, please from their unadorned simplicity as well as from their innate beauty. The second of these Epithalamia is, if not translated, certainly modelled from the Greek, and in its imagery reminds us of Sappho.
It is not known who was the fortunate orator, but we are familiar with the names of some of the poets who addressed epithalamia to the beautiful princess. Nicolaus Marius Paniciatus composed a number of spirituelle Latin poems and epigrams in honor of Lucretia, Alfonso, and Ercole, which were collected under the title of "Borgias."
The bride was lighted to bed by a number of torches, according to her quality; and the company returned in the morning to salute the new married couple, and to sing epithalamia at the door of their bed-chamber. Epithalamia were marriage songs, anciently sung in praise of the bride or bridegroom, wishing them happiness, prosperity and a numerous issue.
But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie.
There was a man in Tennessee, just before the war, who had a printed circular, with a blank for the author's name; and I know of one author who replied to him with a printed note, and a printed address on the envelope, not a word of manuscript about it! Next in frequency are the applications for private literary contributions, such as epithalamia, obituaries, addresses for lovers, and the like.
Among them, we must distinguish the Epithalamia or hymeneals, which were peculiarly adapted to the genius of the poetess from the exquisite perception she seems to have had of whatever was attractive in either sex.
Phoenarete preceded her with a lighted torch, and her female attendants followed, accompanied by young Pericles, bearing on his head a vase of water from the Fountain of Callirhoee, with which custom required that the bride's feet should be bathed. Music was heard until a late hour, and epithalamia were again resumed with the morning light.
"But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie.
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