ainst a worthless pretender of the art of verse, who courts
popularity with strains not worthy of the sacred Muse. Palamas, acting
with greater wisdom than Pope, does not give the name of this unknown
pretender:

Bad? Would that thou wert bad; but something worse thou art:
Thou stretchedst an unworthy hand to the sacred lyre,
And the untaught mob took thy reeling in the dust
For the true song of golden wings; and thou didst take
Thy seat close by the poet's side so thoughtlessly,
And none dared rise and come to drag thee thence away.
And see, instead of scorning thee, the just was angry;
Yet, even his verse's arrow is for thee a glory!

_The Grave_

In tracing the great life influences of our poet, we must not pass over
the loss of his third child, "the child without a peer," as he says
in one of his poems addressed to his wife, "who changed the worldly
air about us into divine nectar, a worthy offering to the spotless-white
light of Olympus." To this loss, the poet has never reconciled himself.
The sorrow finds expression in direct or covert strains in every work he
has written. But its lasting monument was created soon after the child's
death. A collection of poems, entitled _The Grave_, entirely devoted
to his memory, is overflowing with an unique intensity of feeling.
The poems are composed in short quatrains of a slowly moving rhythm
restrained by frequent pauses and occasional metrical irregularities,
and thus they reflect with faithfulness the paternal agony with which
they are filled. They belong to the earlier works of the poet, but they
disclose great lyric power and are the first deep notes of the poet's
genius. A few lines from the dedication follow:

Neither with iron,
Nor with gold,
Nor with the colors
That the painters scatter,

Nor with marble
Carved with art,
Your little house I built
For you to dwell for ever;

With spirit charms alone
I raised it in a land
That knows no matter nor
The withering touch of Time.

With all my tears,
With all my blood,
I founded it
And built its vault....

In another poem, in similar strains, he paints the ominous tranquility
with which the child's birth and parting were attended:

Tranquilly, silently,
Thirsting for our kisses,
Unknown you glided
Into our bosom;

Even the heavy winter
Suddenly smiled
Tranquilly, silently,