Health! Eldest, most august of all The blessed gods, on thee I call! Oh, let me spend with thee the rest Of mortal life, securely blest! Oh, mayst thou be my house-mate still, To shield and shelter me from ill! If wealth have any grace, If fair our children's face; If kinghood, lifting men to be Peers with the high gods' empery; If young Love's flying feet Through secret snares be sweet; If aught of all heaven's gifts to mortals sent, If rest from care be dear, or calm content-- These goodly things, each, all of them, with thee Bloom everlastingly, Blest Health! Yea, Beauty's year Breaks into spring for thee, for only thee! Without thee no man's life is aught but cold and drear. As an example of the pæan or the prosodial hymn, when it assumed a literary form, I may select an ode to Phoebus, which bears the name of Dionysius. Apollo is here addressed in his character of Light-giver, and leader of the lesser powers of heaven. The stars and the moon are his attendants, rejoicing in his music, and deriving from his might their glory. Let all wide heaven be still! Be silent vale and hill, Earth and whispering wind and sea, Voice of birds and echo shrill! For soon amid our choir will be Phoebus with floating locks, the Lord of Minstrelsy! O father of the snow-browed morn; Thou who dost drive the rosy car Of day's wing-footed coursers, borne With gleaming curls of gold unshorn Over heaven's boundless vault afar; Weaving the woof of myriad rays, Wealth-scattering beams that burn and blaze, Enwinding them round earth in endless maze! The rivers of thy fire undying Beget bright day, our heart's desire: The throng of stars to greet thee flying Through cloudless heaven, join choric dances, Hailing thee king with ceaseless crying For joy of thy Phoebean lyre. In front the gray-eyed Moon advances Drawn by her snow-white heifers o'er Night's silent silvery dancing-floor: With gladness her mild bosom burns As round the dædal world she turns. From these specimens we may infer the character of that semi-ethical, semi-religious lyric poetry which was produced so copiously in Greece, and of which we have lost all but accidental remnants. Though not to be compared for grandeur of style and abundance of grace with the odes of Pindar and the fragments of Simonides, they display a careful workmanship, a clear and harmonious development of ideas, that make us long, alas too vainly, for the treasures of a literature now buried in irrevocable oblivion. FOOTNOTES: [76] #toisin d' en messoisi païs phormingi ligeiêi himeroen kitharize; linon d' hypo kalon aeiden leptaleêi phônêi.#--_Iliad_, xviii. 569.