There is one mutilated ode of hers which no one can translate. It is quoted by Longinus as showing with what vivid terseness she can portray the tumultuous and conflicting sensations of a lover in that bright fierce south. Ambrose Philips makes it wordy; Boileau makes it formal. It displays all the grand Greek directness, but a directness clothed in the grand Greek charm of perfect rhythmical expression. We can preserve, if we will, the directness, but the charm of its medium will inevitably vanish. In effect, lamentably stripped of its native verbal charm, it may be rendered-- “Blest as the gods, methinks, is he Who sitteth face to face with thee And hears thy sweet voice nigh, Thy winsome laugh, whereat my heart Doth in my bosom throb and start; One glimpse of thee, and I Am speechless, tongue-tied; subtle flame Steals in a moment through my frame; My ears ring; to mine eye All’s dark; a cold sweat breaks; all o’er I tremble, pale as death; nay more, I seem almost to die.” When after this we read in the _Phèdre_ of Racine these four lines-- Je le vis, je rougis, je palis à sa vue, Un trouble s’éleva dans mon âme éperdue; Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler, Je sentais tout mon cœur et transir et brûler: we recognise their source. We recognise, also, if it were not already confessed, the source of this of Tennyson in his _Fatima_: “Last night, when some one spoke his name, From my swift blood, that went and came, A thousand little shafts of flame Were shivered in my narrow frame.” If this physical perturbation seems strange to the more reticent man of northern blood, it was in no way strange to Theocritus, to Catullus, or to Lucretius. Once more, according to the German proverb, “he who would comprehend the poet must travel in the poet’s land.”