“The god will give you your song, darling. Apollo’s answer is already in your eyes and fingers.”
“Do you think so, Pindar?” asked Nikander, amused. “Yet even so the child must not stop our feast. Medon, will you carry her back to her nurse?”
Nikander expected that she would cry and struggle, but she leaned over and kissed the lyre, then went away with Medon, quite satisfied.
Ever from that time Theria awakened at the first sound of Pindar’s lyre. She would steal down as near as she dared. If the door were shut she would press her ear against it in her eagerness to hear. If it were open she would crouch in its shadow. The slaves passing to and fro with the feast never told. Theria was a favourite with them.
It was Pindar’s habit to bring his songs to Nikander when they were glowing new. Nikander, a poet who had never written himself forth, had the keenest sense of poetic values and Pindar was glad of his judgments. Sometimes an ode would be sung again and again before both pronounced it right. Then Pindar would go out into the Delphic starlight humming the altered, perfected refrain:
“Harken, for once more we plough the field
of Aphrodite of the glancing eyes,”
or
“In anywise to slake my thirst for song,
The ancient glory of thy forefathers summoneth me,”