AF

ARCHILOCHUS.

RCHILOCHUS of Paros, in Lydia, is regarded as the first of the Greek lyric poets. His father's name was Telesicles; his mother was a slave called Enips. He was born about 714 B. C. About 676 B. C. he lost his life in battle or by assassination. Variety and satirical bitterness characterized

his lyric poems—so much so that "Arcadian

bitterness" and Parian heroes became bywords in ancient times. It is said that Lycembes, who had promised his daughter to him in marriage, having failed to fulfil this promise, was so severely satirized by the poet that to escape ridicule both father and daughter hanged themselves. Among the ancients Archilochus was ranked as a poet with Homer.

TURNS OF FORTUNE.

FROM THE GREEK OF ARCHILOCHUS.

Leave the gods to order all things:

Often from the gulf of woe They exalt the poor man grov'ling

In the gloomy shades belowOften turn again, and prostrate

Lay in dust the loftiest head, Dooming him through life to wander 'Reft of sense and wanting bread.

Translation of C. A. ELTON.

EQUANIMITY.

FROM THE GREEK OF ARCHILOCHUS.

Spirit, thou spirit, like a troubled sea,
Ruffled with deep and hard calamity,
Sustain the shock; a daring heart oppose:
Stand firm amidst the charging spears of
foes.

WHILE WE LIVE MAKE THE BEST OF LIFE.

Wherein people differ is the matter of life; wherein they agree is death. While they are alive, we have the distinctions of intelligence and stupidity, honorableness and meanness; when they are dead, we have so much rottenness decaying away: this is the common lot. Yet intelligence and stupidity, honorableness and meanness, are not in one's power; neither is that condition of putridity, decay and utter disappearance. A man's life is not in his own hands, nor is his death; his intelligence is not his own, nor is his stupidity, nor his honorableness, nor his meanness. All are born and all die-the intelligent and the stupid, the honorable and the mean. At ten years old some die; at a hundred years old some die. The virtuous and the sage die; the ruffian and the fool also die. Alive, they were Yaou and Shun; dead, they were so much rotten bone. Who could know any difference between their rotten bones? While alive, therefore, let us hasten to make the best

show;

ing of anything after death?

If conquered, stoop not, prostrated in woe;

Translation of James Legge, D D.

These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife

Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,

Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. Fairer than the earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now Time has done with his one sweet word The wine and leaven of lovely life.

I shall go my ways, tread out my measure,
Fill the days of my daily breath.
With fugitive things not good to treasure,

Do as the world doth, say as it saith;
But if we had loved each other, O sweet,
Had you felt, lying under the palms of your
feet,

The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure

To feel you tread it to dust and death

Ah! had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go, The wine and money, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low:

Come life, come death, not a word be said; Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? I shall never tell you on earth, and in heaven,

If I cry to you then, will you hear or know? ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

PROLOGUE TO THOMSON'S "CORI

OLANUS."

NOT one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.

LORD LYTTELTON.

She watched the sky: the sunset grew dim;
She raised to Camdeo her evening hymn.
The scent of the night-flowers came on the
air,

And then, like a bird escaped from the snare,
She flew to the river: no moon was bright,
But the stars and the fireflies gave her their
light;

She stood beneath the mangoes' shade,
Half delighted and half afraid;

She trimmed the lamp and breathed on each bloom

Oh, that breath was sweeter than all their perfume

Threw spices and oil on the spire of flame,
Called thrice on her absent lover's name;
And every pulse throbbed as she gave
Her little boat to the Ganges' wave.

There are a thousand fanciful things
Linked round the young heart's imaginings;
In its first love-dream a leaf or a flower
Is gifted then with a spell and a power;

A shade is an omen, a dream is a sign,
From which the maiden can well divine
Passion's whole history. Those only can tell
Who have loved as young hearts can love so
well

And Zaide hath forgotten in Azim's arms All her so false lamp's falser alarms.

This looks not a bridal: the singers are mute;

be dyed

When they have some love-augury tried:
Oh, it is not for those whose feelings are cold,
Withered by care or blunted by gold,
Whose brows have darkened with many

years,

To feel again youth's hopes and fears-
What they might blush now to confess,
Yet what made their spring-day's happiness.

Zaide watched her flower-built vessel glide,
Mirrored beneath on the deep-blue tide,
Lovely and lonely, scented and bright,
Like Hope's own bark, all bloom and light.
There's not one breath of wind on the air;
The heavens are cloudless, the waters are
fair;

No dew is falling; yet woe to that shade!
The maiden is weeping-her lamp has decayed.

Hark to the ring of the cimetar!

It tells that the soldier returns from afar;
Down from the mountains the warriors come:
Hark to the thunder-roll of the drum,
To the startling voice of the trumpet's call,
To the cymbal's clash, to the atabal!
The banners of crimson float in the sun :
The warfare is ended, the battle is won.
The mother hath taken the child from her
breast

And raised it to look on its father's crest;
The pathway is lined, as the bands pass along,
With maidens, who meet them with flowers

and song,

Yet there the bride sits. Her dark hair is bound,

And the robe of her marriage floats white on the ground.

Oh, where is the lover, the bridegroom? oh,

where?

Look under yon black pall: the bridegroom is there;

Yet the guests are all bidden, the feast is the

same,

And the bride plights her troth amid smoke and 'mid flame.

They have raised the death-pyre of sweetscented wood

And sprinkled it o'er with the sacred flood Of the Ganges. The priests are assembled;

their song

Sinks deep on the ear as they bear her along, That bride of the dead. Ay, is not this

love,

That one pure, wild feeling all others above, Vowed to the living and kept to the tomb, The same in its blight as it was in its bloom? With no tear in her eye and no change in

her smile

Young Zaide had come nigh to the funeral pile;

The bells of the dancing-girls ceased from

their sound;

Silent they stood by that holiest mound; From a crowd like the sea-waves there came

not a breath

When the maiden stood by the place of death.

spare

To the mother, who stood in her weeping there.

She took the jewels that shone on her hand, She took from her dark hair its flowery band, And scattered them round. At once they

raise

The hymn of rejoicing and love in her praise.
A prayer is muttered, a blessing said,
Her torch is raised: she is by the dead.
She has fired the pile. At once there came
A mingled rush of smoke and of flame.
The wind swept it off: they saw the bride
Laid by her Azim, side by side.

The breeze had spread the long curls of her hair;

Like a banner of fire, they played on the air;

The smoke and the flame gathered round as before,

Then cleared, but the bride was seen no

And milky filberts hoard;

And there his oldest daughter stands With downcast eyes and skilful hands Before her ironing-board.

She comforts all her mother's days, And with her sweet obedient ways

She makes her labors light; So sweet to hear, so fair to see, Oh, she is much too good for me,

That lovely Lettice White.

'Tis hard to feel one's self a fool!

With that same lass I went to school:
I then was great and wise;
She read upon an easier book,
And I-I never cared to look
Into her shy blue eyes.