or--

_Qui non ante patet donec manus attigit ossa,_

are in the essential spirit of Meleager, and, though not verbally copied
from him, have the precise quality of his rhythms and turns of phrase.
But the abandonment to sensibility, the absorption in self-pity and the
sentiment of passion, are carried by Propertius to a far greater length.

The abasement of a line like--

Sis quodcunque voles, non aliena tamen,_

is in the strongest possible contrast to that powerful passion which
fills the poetry of Catullus, or to the romantic tenderness of the
_Eclogues_; and in the extraordinary couplet--

_Me sine, quem semper voluit fortuna iacere,
Hanc animam extremae reddere nequitiae,_

"the expense of spirit in a waste of shame" reaches its culminating
point. This tremulous self-absorption, rather than any defect of eye or
imagination, is the reason of the extraordinary lapses which now and then
he makes both in description and in sentiment. The vivid and picturesque
sketches he gives of fashionable life at watering-places and country-
houses in the eleventh and fourteenth elegies, or single touches, like
that in the remarkable couplet--

_Me mediae noctes, me sidera prona iacentem,
Frigidaque Eoo me dolet aura gelu,_