In parched
corn, for instance, there is a manifest sympathy between the
bursting seed and the more perfect developments of vegetable
life. It is a perfect flower with its petals, like the houstonia
or anemone. On my warm hearth these cerealian blossoms expanded;
here is the bank whereon they grew. Perhaps some such visible
blessing would always attend the simple and wholesome repast.
Here was that "pleasant harbor" which we had sighed for, where
the weary voyageur could read the journal of some other sailor,
whose bark had ploughed, perchance, more famous and classic seas.
At the tables of the gods, after feasting follow music and song;
we will recline now under these island trees, and for our
minstrel call on
ANACREON.
"Nor has he ceased his charming song, for still that lyre,
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades."
_Simonides' Epigram on Anacreon._
I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing
the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more
only the words, Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, - those faint poetic
sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern
men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus,
Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can
converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or
personality.
I know of no studies so composing as those of the classical
scholar. When we have sat down to them, life seems as still
and serene as if it were very far off, and I believe it is
not habitually seen from any common platform so truly and
unexaggerated as in the light of literature. In serene hours we
contemplate the tour of the Greek and Latin authors with more
pleasure than the traveller does the fairest scenery of Greece or
Italy. Where shall we find a more refined society? That highway
down from Homer and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attractive
than the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing with those
old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works, is like walking
amid the stars and constellations, a high and by way serene to
travel. Indeed, the true scholar will be not a little of an
astronomer in his habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed
to obstruct the field of his vision, for the higher regions of
literature, like astronomy, are above storm and darkness.
But passing by these rumors of bards, let us pause for a moment
at the Teian poet.
There is something strangely modern about him. He is very easily
turned into English. Is it that our lyric poets have resounded
but that lyre, which would sound only light subjects, and which
Simonides tells us does not sleep in Hades? His odes are like
gems of pure ivory. They possess an ethereal and evanescent
beauty like summer evenings, - _which you must perceive with the flower of the
mind_, - and show how slight a beauty could be expressed. You
have to consider them, as the stars of lesser magnitude, with the
side of the eye, and look aside from them to behold them. They
charm us by their serenity and freedom from exaggeration and
passion, and by a certain flower-like beauty, which does not
propose itself, but must be approached and studied like a natural
object. But perhaps their chief merit consists in the lightness
and yet security of their tread;
"The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends when _they_ do walk."
True, our nerves are never strung by them; it is too constantly
the sound of the lyre, and never the note of the trumpet; but
they are not gross, as has been presumed, but always elevated
above the sensual.
These are some of the best that have come down to us.
ON HIS LYRE.
I wish to sing the Atridae,
And Cadmus I wish to sing;
But my lyre sounds
Only love with its chords.
Lately I changed the strings
And all the lyre;
And I began to sing the labors
Of Hercules; but my lyre
Resounded loves.
Farewell, henceforth, for me,
Heroes! for my lyre
Sings only loves.
TO A SWALLOW.
Thou indeed, dear swallow,
Yearly going and coming,
In summer weavest thy nest,
And in winter go'st disappearing
Either to Nile or to Memphis.
But Love always weaveth
His nest in my heart....
ON A SILVER CUP.
Turning the silver,
Vulcan, make for me,
Not indeed a panoply,
For what are battles to me?
But a hollow cup,
As deep as thou canst
And make for me in it
Neither stars, nor wagons,
Nor sad Orion;
What are the Pleiades to me?
What the shining Bootes?
Make vines for me,
And clusters of grapes in it,
And of gold Love and Bathyllus
Treading the grapes
With the fair Lyaeus
ON HIMSELF.
Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes,
And he the battles of Troy,
But I of my own defeats.
No horse have wasted me,
Nor foot, nor ships;
But a new and different host,
From eyes smiting me.
TO A DOVE
Lovely dove,
Whence, whence dost thou fly?
Whence, running on air,
Dost thou waft and diffuse
So many sweet ointments?
Who art? What thy errand? -
Anacreon sent me
To a boy, to Bathyllus,
Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all.
Cythere has sold me
For one little song,
And I'm doing this service
For Anacreon.
And now, as you see,
I bear letters from him.
And he says that directly
He'll make me free,
But though he release me,
His slave I will tarry with him.
For why should I fly
Over mountains and fields,
And perch upon trees,
Eating some wild thing?
Now indeed I eat bread,
Plucking it from the hands
Of Anacreon himself;
And he gives me to drink
The wine which he tastes,
And drinking, I dance,
And shadow my master's
Face with my wings;
And, going to rest,
On the lyre itself I sleep.
That is all; get thee gone.
Thou hast made me more talkative,
Man, than a crow.
