Love, Worship and Death: Some Renderings from the Greek Anthology

Among the many diverse forms of expression in which the Greek genius has been revealed to us, that which is preserved in the lyrics of the anthology most typically reflects the familiar life of men, the thought and feeling of every day in the lost ancient world. These little flowers of song reveal, as does no other phase of that great literature, a personal outlook on life, kindly, direct and simple, the tenderness which characterised family relations, the reciprocal affection of master and slave, sympathy with the domestic animals, a generous sense of the obligations of friendship, a gentle piety and a close intimacy with the nature gods, of whose presence, malignant or benign, the Greek was ever sensitively conscious. For these reasons they still make so vivid an appeal to us after a long silence of many centuries. To myself who have lived for some years in that enchanted world of Greece, and have sailed from island to island of its haunted seas, the shores have seemed still quick with the voices of those gracious presences who gave exquisite form to their thoughts on life and death, their sense of awe and beauty and love. There indeed poetry seems the appropriate expression of the environment, and there even still to-day, more than anywhere else in the world, the correlation of our life with nature may be felt instinctively; the human soul seems nearest to the soul of the world.
The poems, of which some renderings are here offered to those who cannot read the originals, cover a period of about a thousand years, broken by one interval during which the lesser lyre is silent. The poets of the elegy and the melos appear in due succession after those of the epic and, significant perhaps of the transition, there are found in the first great period of the lyric the names of two women, Sappho of Lesbos, acknowledged by the unanimous voice of antiquity, which is confirmed by the quality of a few remaining fragments, to be among the greatest poets of all times, and Corinna of Tanagra, who contended with Pindar and rivalled Sappho's mastery. The canon of Alexandria does not include among the nine greater lyrists the name of Erinna of Rhodes, who died too young, in the maiden glory of her youth and fame. The earlier poets of the melos were for the most part natives of