sion, which was neither hope,
nor desire, nor regret, but rather a sense of emotion, of passionate
impulse, mingled with admiration and anxiety. I am conscious at once of
joy and of want; beyond what I possess I see the impossible and the
unattainable; I gauge my own wealth and poverty: in a word, I am and I
am not--my inner state is one of contradiction, because it is one of
transition.

* * * * *

APRIL 1OTH, 1881 [he died May 11th].--What dupes we are of our own
desires!... Destiny has two ways of crushing us--by refusing our wishes
and by fulfilling them. But he who only wills what God wills escapes
both catastrophes. "All things work together for his good."

ANACREON

(B.C. 562?-477)

[Illustration: ANACREON]

Of the life of this lyric poet we have little exact knowledge. We know
that he was an Ionian Greek, and therefore by racial type a
luxury-loving, music-loving Greek, born in the city of Teos on the coast
of Asia Minor. The year was probably B.C. 562. With a few
fellow-citizens, it is supposed that he fled to Thrace and founded
Abdera when Cyrus the Great, or his general Harpagus, was conquering the
Greek cities of the coast. Abdera, however, was too new to afford
luxurious living, and the singing Ionian soon found his way to more
genial Samos, whither the fortunes of the world then seemed converging.
Polycrates was "tyrant," in the old Greek sense of irresponsible ruler;
but withal so large-minded and far-sighted a man that we may use a trite
comparison and say that under him his island was, to the rest of Greece,
as Florence in the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent was to the rest of
Italy, or Athens in the time of Pericles to the other Hellenic States.
Anacreon became his tutor, and may have been of his council; for
Herodotus says that when Oroetes went to see Polycrates he found him in
the men's apartment with Anacreon the Teian. Another historian says that
he tempered the stern will of the ruler. Still another relates that
Polycrates once presented him with five talents, but that the poet
returned the sum after two nights made sleepless from thinking what he
would do with his riches, saying "it was not worth the care it cost."

After the murder of Polycrates, Hipparchus, who ruled at Athens, sent a
trireme to fetch the poet. Like his father Pisistratus, Hipparchus
endeavored to further the cause of letters by calling poets to his
court. Simonides of Ceos was t