utiful, whether present or past, concrete or abstract. He makes broad
strides from his _Hymn to Athena_, to _The Eyes of My Soul_, _Iambs and
Anapests_, and _The Grave_. In all "the pathetic and the common meet
inseparably with an art exact and full of grace, an art that knows its
purpose."[4] But in _Life Immovable_ Palamas rises above the Hellenic
horizon, and strikes the strings of the universal heart in the same
degree as the towns of Patras, Missolonghi, and Athens expand into
Greece and Greece into the world. After all there is both realism and
symbolism in the fact that the first poem of the volume reflects the
atmosphere of the poet's native town while one of the latter ones "The
Ascrean" is filled with an all-including world-vision.

The present volume contains only the first half of _Life Immovable_. It
consists of five collections of poems: The "Fatherlands," "The Return,"
"Fragments from the Song to the Sun," "Verses of a Familiar Tune," and
"The Palm Tree." On the whole, a careful study of these collections
would furnish the key to an adequate understanding of the rest of the
poet's works for which these poems are faithful preludes. For this
reason I am tempted to give an analysis of the translated parts as a
guide to their understanding. But it is by no means my wish to lay down
a fast rule; poetry is no exact science and there should be always ample
room for freedom of suggestion and of view.

1. FATHERLANDS

A series of sonnets, the "Fatherlands," make the opening of the book
and, at the same time, symbolize most clearly the growth of our poet.
Each sonnet describes a fatherland, adding another link to a chain of
worlds that dawn, one after another, upon the poet's being. The first is
Patras, his birthplace. Then follows Missolonghi with its calm lagoon
and the haunts of his boyhood. The splendor of the violet-crowned city
of Athens is succeeded by the island of Corfu, the cradle of the
literary renaissance of Modern Hellenism, which again fades before the
vision of Egypt, whence the earliest lights of civilization shone upon
the land of the Greeks. Christianity in its extreme form of asceticism
is brought forth from one of its strong citadels, Mt. Athos, the holy
mountain of Greece, and a contrast is made between the "gleaming
beauties of the world" and the utter absorption of the ascetic by the
intangible world beyond. The vision of "Queen Hellas," the classic age
of Greece, is followed by the conq