“Yes; that’s better. ‘O guest in this land of horsemen, thou hast come to the most fair of earth’s homes, to gleaming Kolonos, frequented by the nightingale that bubbles liquidly in the shelter of green glades, making his habitation amid the wine-dark ivy, and the untrodden bowers of the god, myriad-berried, unseen of the sun, where Dionysus, master of revels, ever treads, companied by the nymphs that nursed him.’” “O-o-oh!” said David, pushing back his yellow hair, and still rather shy of liking this. “‘And, fed with heavenly dew, the sweet clusters of the narcissus are flowering morn by morn, the immemorial crown of the great goddesses, and the golden-beamed crocus is a-blossom. Nor dwindle ever the sleepless springs whence come the wandering waters of the Kephissus, but every day he flows in stainless tides over the plains of earth’s ripening bosom, giving speedy increase, nor have the choirs of Muses abhorred the spot, nor golden-reined Aphrodite.’” Maddox paused. “That’s your twenty-five lines,” he said. “Oh, ripping,” said David. “It really is. Absolute A1. Do go on.” “I told you it had merit,” said Frank, and proceeded to the end of the chorus. “Why, it’s better than ‘Atalanta,’” said David at the conclusion, despite his barbarian instinct that things like the beauties of Greek literature might perhaps be thought about, but hardly talked of. Maddox, however, had no such notions. “Of course it is,” he said. “And some time, if you work frightfully hard, and love it all, you’ll find, as the Head told us the other day, that you simply laugh at the thought of translating it at all. You’ll know it can’t be translated, and that will be the reward of your work, for it will mean that Greek has got into your blood, that it’s part of you.” “Do you mean the Head’s like that?” asked David. “All the same, I think I would sooner translate it like you.” “You don’t understand, but you would if you had heard him the other day. We had a Plato lesson with him, but instead of going through a single line of it, something set him off, and he talked to us for the whole hour about Athens and the life they led there. You never heard anything so splendid. You could go up to the Acropolis in the morning, and look at the frieze Pheidias had put up in the Parthenon, a procession of horses and boys riding to the temple on Athene’s birthday. He showed us pictures of it; some were mounted,—oh Lord, they had good seats—and others were still putting their horses’ bridles on, and one horse was rubbing its foreleg with its nose, or t’other way round.” “Pheidias?” asked David.