which one sees so many at shrines and in churches across the water to-day,
has been borrowed from the pagans. A pretty bit of sentiment is suggested
by an inscription[65] found near the ancient village of Ucetia in Southern
France: "This shrine to the Nymphs have I built, because many times and
oft have I used this spring when an old man as well as a youth."

All of the verses which we have been considering up to this point have
come down to us more or less carefully engraved upon stone, in honor of
some god, to record some achievement of importance, or in memory of a
departed friend. But besides these formal records of the past, we find a
great many hastily scratched or painted sentiments or notices, which have
a peculiar interest for us because they are the careless effusions or
unstudied productions of the moment, and give us the atmosphere of
antiquity as nothing else can do. The stuccoed walls of the houses, and
the sharp-pointed stylus which was used in writing on wax tablets offered
too strong a temptation for the lounger or passer-by to resist. To people
of this class, and to merchants advertising their wares, we owe the three
thousand or more graffiti found at Pompeii. The ephemeral inscriptions
which were intended for practical purposes, such as the election notices,
the announcements of gladiatorial contests, of houses to rent, of articles
lost and for sale, are in prose, but the lovelorn lounger inscribed his
sentiments frequently in verse, and these verses deserve a passing notice
here. One man of this class in his erotic ecstasy writes on the wall of a
Pompeian basilica:[66] "May I perish if I'd wish to be a god without
thee." That hope sprang eternal in the breast of the Pompeian lover is
illustrated by the last two lines of this tragic declaration:[67]

"If you can and won't,
Give me hope no more.
Hope you foster and you ever