Perhaps the most celebrated of these tender domestic passages is to be found in the oft-quoted lines from Simonides, where Danaë sings over the boy Perseus:—
“When in the ark of curious workmanship
The winds and swaying waters fearfully
Were rocking her, with streaming eyes, around
Her boy the mother threw her arms and said:
“‘O darling, I am very miserable;
But thou art cosy-warm and sound asleep
In this thy dull, close-cabin’d prison-house,
Stretched at full ease in the dark, ebon gloom.
Over thy head of long and tangled hair