chin! not to see
Within the leaves a slumbering bee.
The bee awak'd--with anger wild
The bee awak'd, and stung the child.
Loud and piteous are his cries;
To Venus quick he runs, he flies;
"Oh mother! I am wounded through--
"I die with pain--in sooth I do!
"Stung by some little angry thing.
"Some serpent on a tiny wing,
"A bee it was--for once, I know,
"I heard a rustic call it so."

"Isn't that a very pretty song?" asked the laughing girl. "How stupid of
little Eros to mistake a bee for a winged snake! Grandmother says that
the great poet Anacreon wrote another verse to this song, but she will
not teach it me. Tell me, Melitta, what can there be in that verse?
There, you are smiling; dear, darling Melitta, do sing me that one verse.
Perhaps though, you don't know it yourself? No? then certainly you can't
teach it me."

"That is a new song," answered the old woman, evading her darling's
question, "I only know the songs of the good old times. But hark! did not
you hear a knock at the gate?"

[The last lines which contain the point of this song are:

Thus he spoke, and she, the while,
Heard him with a soothing smile;
Then said, "My infant, if so much
"Thou feel the little wild bee's touch,
"How must the heart, ah! Cupid be,
"The hapless heart that's stung by thee?"

--Translation from one of Anacreon's songs]

"Yes, of course I did, and I think the sound of horses' hoofs too. Go and
see who seeks admission so early. Perhaps, after all, our kind Phanes did
not go away yesterday, and has come to bid us farewell once more."

"Phanes is gone," said Melitta, becoming serious, "and Rhodopis has
ordered me to send you in when visitors arrive. Go child, that I may open
the gate. There, they have knocked again."

Sappho pretended to run in, but instead of obeying her nurse's orders,
stopped and hid herself behind a rose-bush, hoping to catch sight of
these early guests. In the fear of needlessly distressing her, she had
not been told of the events of the previous evening, and at this early
hour could only expect to see some very intimate friend of her
grandmother's.

Melitta opened the gate and admitted a youth splendidly apparelled, and
with fair curling hair.

It was Bartja, and Sappho was so lost in wonder at his beauty, and the
Persian d