Voice and speech, and under my skin there courses
Swiftly a thin flame;
Darkness is on my eyes, in my ears a drumming,
Drenched in sweat my frame, my body trembling;
Paler ev’n than grass—’tis, I doubt, but little
From death divides me.”
Anacreon to Bathyllus
Several of the odes of Anacreon (B.C. 520) are addressed to his young friend Bathyllus. The following short one has been preserved to us by Athenæus (bk. xiii. § 17):—