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, ho chr_e’ se noei~n no’ou a’nthei,—­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