Chorus. Clouds of all hue, Now rise we aloft with our garments of dew, We come from old Ocean's unchangeable bed, We come till the mountains' green summits we tread, We come to the peaks with their landscapes untold, We gaze on the earth with her harvests of gold, We gaze on the rivers in majesty streaming, We gaze on the lordly, invisible sea; We come, for the eye of the Ether is beaming, We come, for all Nature is flashing and free. Let us shake off this close-clinging dew From our members eternally new, And sail upward the wide world to view, Come away! Come away! Socr. O goddesses mine, great Clouds and divine, ye have heeded and answered my prayer. Heard ye their sound, and the thunder around, as it thrilled through the petrified air? Streps. Yes, by Zeus! and I shake, and I'm all of a quake, and I fear I must sound a reply, Their thunders have made my soul so afraid, and those terrible voices so nigh-- Socr. Don't act in our schools like those comedy-fools, with their scurrilous, scandalous ways. Deep silence be thine, while these Clusters divine their soul-stirring melody raise. To which the chorus again responds. But we have not room for farther extracts. The description of the floating-cloud character of the scene is acknowledged by critics to be inimitable. There is one passage, in particular, in which Socrates, pointing to the clouds that have taken a sudden slanting downward motion, says: "They are drifting, an infinite throng, And their long shadows quake over valley and brake"-- which, MR. RUSKIN declares, "could have been written by none but an ardent lover of the hill scenery--one who had watched hour after hour the peculiar, oblique, sidelong action of descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and ravines of the hills. [Footnote: The line in Greek, which is so vividly descriptive of this peculiar appearance and motion of the clouds-- dia toy koiloy kai toy daseoy autai plagiai-- loses so much in the rendering, that the beauty of the passage can be fully appreciated only by the Greek scholar.] There are no lumpish solidities, no billowy protuberances here. All is melting, drifting, evanescent, full of air, and light as dew." Choral Song from "The Birds." In the following extract from the comedy of The Birds, Aristophanes ridicules the popular belief of the Greeks in signs and omens drawn from the birds of the air. Though undoubtedly an exaggeration, it may nevertheless be taken as a fair exposition of the superstitious notions of an age that had its world-renowned "oracles," and as a good example of the poet's comic style. The extract is from the Choral Song in the comedy, and is a true poetic gem.