When Spring grows old, and sleepy winds Set from the South with odours sweet, I see my love, in green, cool groves, Speed down dusk aisles on shining feet. She throws a kiss and bids me run, In whispers sweet as roses' breath; I know I cannot win the race, And at the end, I know, is death. But joyfully I bare my limbs, Anoint me with the tropic breeze, And feel through every sinew run The vigour of Hippomenes. O race of love! we all have run Thy happy course through groves of Spring, And cared not, when at last we lost, For life or death, or anything! There are a few thoughts here requiring a little comment. You know that the Greek games and athletic contests were held in the fairest season, and that the contestants were stripped. They were also anointed with oil, partly to protect the skin against sun and temperature and partly to make the body more supple. The poet speaks of the young man as being anointed by the warm wind of Spring, the tropic season of life. It is a very pretty fancy. What he is really telling us is this: "There are no more Greek games, but the race of love is still run to-day as in times gone by; youth is the season, and the atmosphere of youth is the anointing of the contestant." But the moral of the piece is its great charm, the poetical statement of a beautiful and a wonderful fact. In almost every life there is a time when we care for only one person, and suffer much for that person's sake; yet in that period we do not care whether we suffer or die, and in after life, when we look back at those hours of youth, we wonder at the way in which we then felt. In European life of to-day the old Greek fable is still true; almost everybody must run Atalanta's race and abide by the result.