EXTRACT FROM THE ODYSSEY.

The brazen threshold; for a light he saw,
As of the sun or moon, illuming clear
The palace of Phæacia's mighty king.

Walls plated bright with brass on either side
Stretched from the portal to the interior house,
With azure cornice crowned; the doors were gold,
Which shut the palace fast; silver the posts
Reared on a brazen threshold, and above,
The lintels, silver architraved with gold.
Mastiffs, in gold and silver, lined the approach
On either side, by art celestial framed
Of Vulcan, guardians of Alcinois' gate
Forever, unobnoxious to decay.

Sheer from the threshold to the inner house

Fixed thrones the walls, through all their length, adorned,
With mantles overspread of subtlest warp

Transparent, work of inany a female hand.

On these the princes of Phæacia sat,

Holding perpetual feasts, while golden youths

On all the sumptuous altars stood, their hands

With burning torches charged, which, night by night,
Shed radiance over all the festive throng.

Full fifty female menials served the king

In household offices; the rapid mills

These turning, pulverize the mellowed grain;
Those, seated orderly, the purple fleece
Wind off, or ply the loom, restless as leaves
Of lofty poplars fluttering in the breeze;

Bright as with oil the new-wrought texture shone.

Without the court, and to the gates adjoined,
A spacious garden lay, fenced all around
Secure, four acres measuring complete.
There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree,
Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright,
The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth.

Those fruits nor winter's cold nor summer's heat
Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang
Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes
Gently on all, enlarging these, and those
Maturing genial; in an endless course
Pears after pears to full dimensions swell,
Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again
Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped)
The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before.

There too, well-rooted, and of fruit profuse,
His vineyard grows; part, wide-extended, basks
In the sun's beams; the arid level glows;

149

In part they gather, and in part they tread
The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes
Here put their blossom forth, there gather fast
Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme
Flowers of all hues smile all the year, arranged
With neatest art judicious, and amid

The lovely scene two fountains welling forth,
One visits, into every part diffused,

The garden ground, the other soft beneath
The threshold steals into the palace court,
Whence every citizen his vase supplies.

Such were the ample blessings on the house

Of King Alcinoüs by the gods bestowed."-COWPER.

Minor Poems of Homer.-The Iliad and the Odyssey are the only authentic productions of Homer. To their author, however, have been attributed about thirty hymns and several minor poems, which have little claim to so distinguished an origin. Of these, "the Margites," a satire on a blockhead who knew much "but everything knew ill," was probably the work of some clever Athenian in an age when epic poetry was a thing of the past; the poem is no longer extant.

"The Battle of the Frogs and Mice," a mock heroic of comparatively modern birth, is still preserved and appreciated. It is a witty burlesque on the Iliad (perhaps the earliest burlesque extant), written in a bold and flowing style. The plot is brief. A mouse, Crumb-snatcher, son of the Mice-king, flying from an enemy, reaches a pool over which a courteous frog, Puff-cheek, undertakes to carry him. But during the passage a water-snake appears; the frightened frog dives to escape his foe, and thoughtlessly leaves his newly-made friend to drown. The mice gather to avenge the loss of their prince; a great battle ensues, and but for the interference of Jupiter the frogs would have been annihilated.

The so-called HOMERIC HYMNS, which the ancients believed to be the work of Homer, if somewhat inferior in age to the Iliad and Odyssey, are undoubtedly older than the pieces named above. Those addressed to Apollo, Mercury, Venus,

THE HOMERIC HYMNS.

151

and Ceres, the finest in the collection, are regular poems of some length; the others are simple eulogies or brief preludes to longer pieces. The Hymn to Venus has a tenderness and warmth not unworthy of Homer. The one in honor of Ceres relates the abduction of her daughter Pros'erpine by Pluto, king of the lower world, the mother's search for the stolen maiden, her anger on discovering the ravisher, and the final arrangement that the goddess shall enjoy the society of her daughter during two-thirds of the year. As a favorable speci men of its style, we cite the lines that follow:

THE ABDUCTION OF PROSERPINE.

"In Nysia's vale, with nymphs a lovely train,
Sprung from the hoary father of the main,
Fair Proserpine consumed the fleeting hours
In pleasing sports, and plucked the gaudy flowers.
Around them wide the flamy crocus glows,
Through leaves of verdure blooms the opening rose;
The hyacinth declines his fragrant head,
And purple violets deck th' enamelled mead.
The fair Narcissus far above the rest,

By magic formed, in beauty rose confessed.

So Jove, t' ensnare the virgin's thoughtless mind,
And please the ruler of the shades, designed.
He caused it from the opening earth to rise,
Sweet to the scent, alluring to the eyes.
Never did mortal or celestial power
Behold such vivid tints adorn a flower.

From the deep root a hundred branches sprung,
And to the winds ambrosial odors flung;
Which, lightly wafted on the wings of air,

The gladdened earth and heaven's wide circuit share.
The joy-dispensing fragrance spreads around,
And ocean's briny swell with smiles is crowned.

Pleased at the sight, nor deeming danger nigh,
The fair beheld it with desiring eye:

Her eager hand she stretched to seize the flower,
(Beauteous illusion of the ethereal power!)
When, dreadful to behold, the rocking ground
Disparted-widely yawned a gulf profound!
Forth rushing from the black abyss, arose
The gloomy monarch of the realm of woes,

Pluto, from Saturn sprung. The trembling maid
He seized, and to his golden car conveyed.
Borne by immortal steeds the chariot flies:
And thus she pours her supplicating cries:-
Assist, protect me, thou who reign❜st above,
Supreme and best of gods, paternal Jove!'

But ah! in vain the hapless virgin rears

Her wild complaint: nor god nor mortal hears!
Not to the white-armed nymphs with beauty crowned,
Her loved companions, reached the mournful sound."

HOLE.

There are also various fragments styled Homeric, supposed to have been dropped from the poet's genuine or spurious works. Among these is the beautiful couplet quoted by Plato :

"Asked and unasked, thy blessings give, O Lord!

The evil, though we ask it, from us ward."

Cyclic Poets. After the death of Homer, a host of imitators sprung up in Greece and Asia Minor. Rhapsodists by profession, as they wandered among the Grecian cities reciting the Homeric poems, their attention was naturally directed to epic composition, and they sought to supply in verse like Homer's what the Iliad and Odyssey had left untold. Confining themselves to the Cycle (circle) of the Trojan War, they were called Cyclic poets.

One bard sung of the preparations made by the Grecian chiefs and the events of the war prior to Achilles' withdrawal ; two others took up the narrative where the Iliad left it, and described the sack of Troy; a fourth celebrated the return voyages of the Greek heroes; a fifth supplemented the Odyssey with the later history of Ulysses. Fragments only of these Cyclic epics survive.

HESIOD AND HIS WORKS.

Hesiod.-Homer was an Ionian of Asia Minor. Shortly after his time, or, as some think, contemporaneously with him, a new school of epic poetry appeared in the mother-country.

HESIOI AND HIS WORKS.

153

Its founder was Hesiod, who, like Homer, wrote in the Ionic dialect.

Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia, and brought up in the midst of rural life at the base of Mount Helicon. Here first he held free converse with the Muses. On his father's death, he was defrauded of his portion of the estate by his younger brother Perses, who bribed the judges charged with making the division. Hesiod felt the wrong keenly, yet seems to have regarded his unnatural brother with fraternal interest; for one object of his poem entitled "Works and Days," was to reclaim Perses from dissolute improvidence and incite him to a life of industry.

The first portion of this work is devoted to moral lessons; some in a proverbial form, and others illustrated by narratives and fables. The latter part contains practical directions for the husbandman, and also treats of the art of navigation, important to the Boeotian farmer because much of his produce was shipped to other countries. The whole abounds in excellent precepts for every-day life, and forms the earliest specimen of didactic poetry among the Greeks. For ages its lines were committed to memory and recited as part of the course of ethics in their schools.

FROM HESIOD'S WORKS AND DAYS.

RIGHT AND WRONG.

"Wrong, if he yield to its abhorred control,
Shall pierce like iron to the poor man's soul:
Wrong weighs the rich man's conscience to the dust,
When his foot stumbles on the way unjust.
Far different is the path, a path of light,
That guides the feet to equitable right:
The end of righteousness, enduring long,
Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.
The fool by suffering his experience buys;
The penalty of folly makes him wise.

But they who never from the right have strayed,
Who as the citizen the stranger aid,

G