Love, Worship and Death: Some Renderings from the Greek Anthology

Among the many diverse forms of expression in which the Greek genius has been revealed to us, that which is preserved in the lyrics of the anthology most typically reflects the familiar life of men, the thought and feeling of every day in the lost ancient world. These little flowers of song reveal, as does no other phase of that great literature, a personal outlook on life, kindly, direct and simple, the tenderness which characterised family relations, the reciprocal affection of master and slave, sympathy with the domestic animals, a generous sense of the obligations of friendship, a gentle piety and a close intimacy with the nature gods, of whose presence, malignant or benign, the Greek was ever sensitively conscious. For these reasons they still make so vivid an appeal to us after a long silence of many centuries. To the author who have lived for some years in that enchanted world of Greece, and have sailed from island to island of its haunted seas, the shores have seemed still quick with the voices of those gracious presences who gave exquisite form to their thoughts on life and death, their sense of awe and beauty and love. There indeed poetry seems the appropriate expression of the environment, and there even still to-day, more than anywhere else in the world, the correlation of our life with nature may be felt instinctively; the human soul seems nearest to the soul of the world.