POETRY.
A DEAD LANGUAGE P "Fru, high the bowl with Samian wine That made Anacreon's song divine ! " Cried Byron, pledging in taunting strain The sleeping Hellas he'd rouse again. But though no more may the day come round When the tramp of her phalanx shall shake the ground, Though the sun of her warrior days be set,
She holds a sceptre that sways us yet—
Her speech! That speech is the golden bowl That brims with the wine of the living soul : And shall we listen to those that say, "Fling bowl and its Hippocrene away" The flagons, of purest crystal wrought,
That garner the vintage of Grecian thought—
Shall they be shattered, and bear no more Across the ages their mellowed store Of wisdom, and song, and" words with wings" That soar to the roof and crown of things P Like Homer's heroes, shall Homer's tongue Perish " the dogs and kites among " With broken strings shall Pindar's lute For the world in coming years be mute P A voice no longer shall Plato find, And barred to us be the gates of his mind P On Aristophanes' page be impressed Music-hall songs as a palimpsest ?
And Socrates with "Clouds" be gone Into the night of oblivion P " Greek ! Why the language is dead," they say, "Dead to the uses of our to-day ; Aids not in corners' and rings' formation ; On the Stock Exchange has no quotation 1" What, dead P while rolls in swelling chords The mighty music of Homer's words P Dead P while Pindar its meads among Binds up its flowers in sheaves of song P While Plato, who for n11 ages wrought,
Carves in its marble undying thought P While yet Orestes from Furies flies,
Prometheus aloud on great Nature cries, The loving wife for her husband dies, Dead to the prayer of her children's eyes P* Dead ? Is the diamond dead while bright With undimmed flashes of rainbow light P Dead, forsooth, in that aeons are gone Since its atoms froze to translucent stone ?
So lives and shall live the Grecian tongue, A diamond all other speech among!
J. G. HOLLWAY (A Rugbeian of Arnold's time, and of Trinity College, Cambridge).
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