How blind is he who, powerless to discern
The glories that about his pathway burn,
Walks unaware the avenues of Dream,
Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!
O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned
Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.
From sordid scenes he lifts his eyes at will,
And sees a Grecian god on every hill!
In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope, and in age beseech.
A violet softly sighed, A hollyhock shouted above.
In the heart of the violet, pride; In the heart of the hollyhock, love.
If women knew themselves the fact that men do not know them would flatter them less and content them more.
The angel with a flaming sword slept at his post, and Eve slipped back into the Garden. "Thank Heaven! I am again in Paradise," said Adam.
Footnotes:
[A] It may be noted here that the popular conception of this poet as a frivolous sensualist is unsustained by evidence and repudiated by all having knowledge of the matter. Although love and wine were his constant themes, there is good ground for the belief that he wrote of them with greater abandon than he indulged in them—a not uncommon practice of the poet-folk, by the way, and one to which those who sing of deeds of arms are perhaps especially addicted. The great age which Anacreon attained points to a temperate life; and he more than once denounces intoxication with as great zeal as a modern reformer who has eschewed the flagon for the trencher. According to Anacreon, drunkenness is "the vice of barbarians;" though, for the matter of that, it is difficult to say what achievable vice is not. In Ode LXII, he sings:
Fill me, boy, as deep a draught
As e'er was filled, as e'er was quaffed;
But let the water amply flow
To cool the grape's intemperate glow.