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.
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