e it; it marks the man and the age of luxurious culture.

They give thy letter to me, even now;
I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.
The master of thy galley still unlades
Gift after gift; they block my court at last
And pile themselves along its portico
Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee;
And one white she-slave from the group dispersed
Of black and white slaves (like the chequer work
Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift,
Now covered with this settle-down of doves),
One lyric woman, in her crocus vest
Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands
Commends to me the strainer and the cup
Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.

But he is more than luxurious. He desires the highest life, and he
praises the king because he has acknowledged by his gifts the joy that
Art gives to life; and most of all he praises him, because he too
aspires, building a mighty tower, not that men may look at it, but that
he may gaze from its height on the sun, and think what higher he may
attain. The tower is the symbol of the cry of the king's soul.

Then he answers the king's letter. "It is true, O king, I am poet,
sculptor, painter, architect, philosopher, musician; all arts are mine.
Have I done as well as the great men of old? No, but I have combined
their excellences into one man, into myself.

"I have not chanted verse like Homer, no--
Nor swept string like Terpander--no--nor carved
And painted men like Phidias and his friend:
I am not great as they are, point by point.
But I have entered into sympathy
With these four, running these into one soul,
Who, separate, ignored each other's art.
Say, is it nothing that I know them all?

"This, since the best in each art has already been done, was the only
progress possible, and I have made it. It is not unworthy, king!

"Well, now thou askest, if having done this, 'I have not attained the
very crown of life; if I cannot now comfortably and fearlessly meet
death?' 'I, Cleon, leave,' thou sayest, 'my life behind me in my poems,
my pictures; I am immortal in my work. What more can life desire?'"

It is the question so many are asking now, and it is the answer now
given. What better immortality than in one's work left behind to move in
men? What more than this can life desire? But Cleon does not agree with
that. "If thou, O king, with the light now in thee, hadst looked at
creat