Perhaps the preservation of the elder writers is somewhat worthy of remark when we consider the periods in which they lived and the centuries that have intervened, since lyric poets have not been beloved of their contemporaries, nor indeed of conventional scholars of the ages, because of unrestraint of utterance, and their untamable fire. Their souls are revolutionary. They do not follow the established order. Too frequently they utter the naked thought. Someone has said that degeneracy and prudery go together. The history of creative ages seems to prove it. In addition, lyric poets have always loved life for its own sake, unenlivened of faith and unsanctified of the spirit. Their sense and appreciation of the present has been so real, vivid, that there was left neither room nor desire to ask for anything beyond. Upon earth, in their brains, they were given the vision of a heaven. Anacreon was the blithe Greek; Heine the bitter Hebrew; and Hafiz the fiery-hearted Persian. Tu Fu was the sensitive, sumptuous souled, supercivilized oriental, haunted with the richness of a past that was too great. Anacreon was the Greek whom thought of death could not terrify, who was ready to meet it with a smile. To him the beautiful present was so satisfying, sufficient, that it was anodyne of ill. And he loved the beautiful present blithely, without regret or anger that it could not last. He gave his heart to it and was happy. He asked no more. To be sure he has no fiery strain of passion. This, critics have counted to his discredit. And he gave us the light side of Greek nature. His enthusiasms were no more permanent than his roses. But they were as lovely, and inimitable. He was an intellectual sensualist. He praised love, wine, for the Tyrant of Samos. Despite it all he was a great artist in surity of modeling and lightness of touch. A graceful fancy was his, a courtier’s polished wit. He has kept the favor of the ages. The world has loved him. _What Anacreon sang in wanton splendor long ago, time has not destroyed_, says Horace. _Nec ... quid olim lusit Anacreon delevit ætas._ And both Plato and Ovid have praised him. The fastidious, the scholarly Bodenstedt imitated him as well as Hafiz, in his _Songs of Mirza Schaffy_. A book could be written of them who loved him, who attempted to make his charm their own. A fluent ease was his. He is a bird in careless singing. What grace! He gives closely the sensation of natural things. His effect is indeed nature’s, that of something without a soul, irresponsible. With him intellect had not become the two-edged sword that cuts the hand. His note of joy is pure, unmixed of care, as that of a boy. He was of the fine free ages when the spirit was unfettered. Coming to him fresh from reading writers of today, is like stepping from a heated yellow ball room, filled with dizzy whirling figures, out into the fresh, pure air of dawn.