or he would address his own songs, calling them
“My lords of lute,
My feathered arrows of sweet song,
My golden pillars of sweet song——”
These were the familiars of Theria’s childhood and entered into the fabric of her mind. Pindar, as he strode singing away, little recked of the girl-listener drinking at his fountain and transmuted in all her being by his supreme expression.
CHAPTER VII
WHAT GIFTS THE GUESTS BROUGHT
It was through a guest that Theria first came to visualize those distant colonies of the west which gave so many gifts to Delphi and played so important a part in Delphi’s life.
He was a simple-seeming guest, this young man from far-away Elea in Italy. But child though Theria was, she could not but note his face. It shone with an almost startling quietness, a robust and heavenly calm. The soul of the man had been dipped deep and deep again in abstract thought. Earthly things were washed away. The “Parmenidean Countenance of Peace” was soon to be recognized throughout Hellas, for even the disciples of Parmenides acquired this same look.
“Yes,” he said, smiling, as though it were an ordinary happening. “We were nearly shipwrecked off Corcyra. Four days of storm. I thought my earthly term was come. But I knew that I would at once rise from the sea and begin my long progress toward the Eternal Source.”