Theron the next honour claims;
Theron to no man gives place,
Is first in Pisa’s, and in virtue’s race;
Theron there, and he alone,
Ev’n his own swift forefathers has outgone.After a long mythological digression, the poet returns briefly to his subject, and in a
celebrated passage allies his talent with the inexhaustible power of Nature figured in
the soaring eagle of Zeus. Cowley is more diffuse than Pindar and hails the eagle as
the bearer of Zeus’ thunderbolts and for carrying of the beauteous youth Ganymede
from earth to Olympus.
Let Art use method and good husbandry,
Art lives on Nature’s alms, is weak and poor;
Nature herself has unexhausted store,
Wallows in wealth, and runs a turning maze,
That no vulgar eye can trace.
Art instead of mounting high,
About her humble food does hovering fly.
Like the ignoble crow, rapine and noise does love,
Whilst Nature, like the sacred bird of Jove,
Now bears loud thunder, and anon with silent joy
The beauteous Phrygian boy,
Defeats the strong, o’ertakes the flying prey;
And sometimes basks in th’open flames of day.
And sometimes too he shrouds,
His soaring wings among the clouds.There are many lyrics on a smaller scale and on more personal themes surviving for
the most part in fragments quoted in later authors. Such are the poems of Anacreon:
Come, boy, bring me a bowl, so that I may drink without stopping for breath; pour
in ten ladles of water and five of wine, that I may once again ply the Bacchant with
decorum. Come again, let us no longer practice Scythian drinking with clatter and
shouting over our wine, but drink moderately amid beautiful songs of praise.Lord, with whom Love the subduer and the blue-eyed nymphs and radiant
Aphrodite play, as you haunt the lofty mountain peaks, I beseech you: come to me
with kindly heart, hear my prayer and find it acceptable; give Cleobulus good
counsel, Dionysus, that he accept my love.144 THE GREEKS