Besides dirges and epigrams, hymns, prayers, pæans, and processional odes, flowed from the prolific pen of Simonides. Long a chorus-teacher in the land of his birth, he was peculiarly fitted for the composition of solemn choral poetry. “The Lament of Danaë,” his finest surviving work, is a noble specimen of the Greek lyric. It describes the Argive princess set adrift with her child in an ark upon the stormy billows by her inhuman parent. Tenderly she folds the sleeping boy in her arms, and prays Father Zeus that like him the sea may sleep. DANAË’S LAMENT. “Closed in the fine-wrought chest, She felt, the rising wind the waters move. Then, by new fear possessed, With action wild And cheeks bedewed, she stretched her arms of love Toward Perseus:‘O my child, What sorrow wrings my breast! While thou art sunk so deep In infancy’s calm sleep; Launched in this joyless ark, Bronze-fastened, glimmering-dark, Yet, pillowed on thy tangled hair, Thou slumberest, nor dost care For billows past thee bounding Nor breezes shrilly sounding. Laid in thy mantle red, sweet face, how fair! Ah! but if Fear Had aught of fear for thee, Thou even to me Wouldst turn thy tender ear. But now I bid thee rest, my babe; sleep still! Rest, O thou sea! Rest, rest, unbounded ill! Zeus, Father, some relief, some change from thee! Am I too bold? For _his_ sake, pardon me!’” EPITAPH ON THE NIECE OF HIPPARCHUS. “Archedicè, the daughter of King Hippias, Who in his time Of all the potentates of Greece was prime, This dust doth hide; Daughter, wife, sister, mother, unto kings she was, Yet free from pride.”—HOBBES. Pindar, the friend and pupil of Simonides, the greatest master of the Doric School, adorned the golden age of Grecian literature, and will there be considered as the representative of lyric poetry. MINOR ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. MIMNERMUS of Colophon (634-590 B.C.), the first to adapt the elegiac couplet to plaintive and erotic themes: he bewails the enslavement of his degenerate country by Lydia. Old age the terror of the poet; life without “the gold-haired goddess” of love not worth living; a characteristic saying of his, “When the flower of youth is past, it is best to die at once; may death strike me at my sixtieth year.” SOLON, the Athenian lawgiver (638-559 B.C.), the first _gnomic_ poet: embodied his moral maxims (_gnomes_) in elegiac verse: also a master of the martial elegy, as his famous “Salaminian Ode” shows. Plato declared that if Solon had devoted his genius to the Muses, Homer might not have stood alone in his glory.