SIMONIDES, "the wise and divine," (as he is called by Plato,) was the son of Leopres, and a native of Ceos, where he presided over a school for the instruction of the Tragic Chorus. He afterwards removed to Syracuse, where he was high in favour with King Hiero, and is said to have died in the ninety-first year of his age. To hin is attributed the invention, or, at least, the establishment of the Funeral Elegy. But it was for his Epigrams, written chiefly on those who fell in battle against the Persians, that he was most renowned. These are all characterized, (as Mr. Coleridge truly says,) "by force, downrightness, and terse simplicity-apɛɛia-in the highest degree of any to be found in the Antho

logy." In one of them, (that of "the three hundred who died at Thermopyla")—he bore away the prize from Eschylus.

An anecdote has been related of him by Cicero, that, having found and buried the corpse of some unknown person washed up by the sea, and being afterwards about to embark on a voyage, he was warned by a vision of the dead man to postpone it, lest he should suffer shipwreck. He obeyed the warning and stayed at home, while those, who sailed without him, were shipwrecked and lost.

Our poet is not to be confounded with his relative and namesake, the author of a satiric poem on Woman.*

ON ARCHEDICE, THE DAUGHTER OF
HIPPIAS.

DAUGHTER of him, who ruled the Athenian plains,
This honoured urn Archedice contains;
Of tyrants mother, daughter, sister, wife,
Her soul was humble, and unstained her life.

ON TIMOCREON OF RHODES. AFTER cramming, and swilling, and damning my neighbours,

I, Timocreon of Rhodes, here repose from my labours.

ON MEGISTIAS THE SOOTHSAYER, WHO PERISHED WITH LEONIDAS AT THE PASS OF THERMOPYLE.

THIS tomb records Megistias' honoured name, Who bravely fighting in the ranks of fame,

Fell by the Persians, near Sperchius' tide. Both past and future well the prophet knew; And yet, though death was open to his view, He chose to perish at his general's side.

ON THOSE WHO FELL AT THERMOPYLÆ.

In dark Thermopyla they lie;
Oh death of glory thus to die!
Their tomb an altar is, their name
A mighty heritage of fame:

Their dirge is triumph; cankering rust,
And time, that turneth all to dust,

* He wrote an apologue on women, in which he represents them as having been formed from elements and animals of supposed correspondent natures.

That tomb shall never waste nor hide,-
The tomb of warriors true and tried.
The full-voiced praise of Greece around
Lies buried in that sacred mound;
Where Sparta's king, Leonidas,
In death eternal glory has.

On the Same.

GREATLY to die, if this be glory's height,

For the fair meed we own our fortune kind; For Greece and Liberty we plunged to night, And left a never-dying name behind.

On the Same.*

Go, stranger, and to Lacedæmon tell, That here, obedient to her laws, we fell.

Another translation of the Same. STRANGER, Should Sparta ask our fate, reply That here, obedient to her laws, we lie.

Another.

Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by, That here, obedient to their laws we lie.

* Ω ξειν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις, ὅτι τῇδε Κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ρήμασι πειθόμενοι. Christopher North, in one of his delightful articles on the Greek Anthology, has given us no less than twentythree translations of this celebrated epitaph, which he thus prefaces: "The oldest and best inscription is that on the altar-tomb of the Three Hundred. Do you remember it? Here it is-the Greek-with three Latin and eighteen English versions. Start not: it is but two lines--and ad Greece, for centuries, had them by heart. She forgot them, and 'Greece was living Greece no more.'"'-Blackwood, Vol. xxxiv, p. 970.

ON CIMON'S LAND AND SEA VICTORY.

NE'ER since the olden time, when Asia stood
First torn from Europe by the ocean-flood,
Since horrid Mars thus poured on either shore
The storm of battle and the wild uproar,
Hath Man by land and sea such glory won,
Ne'er seen such deeds, as thou, this day, hast
done.

By land, the Medes in thousands press the ground;

By sea, an hundred Tyrian ships are drown'd With all their martial host; while Asia stands Deep groaning by, and wrings her helpless hands.

ON THOSE WHO FELL AT EURYMEDON.

THESE by the streams of famed Eurymedon Their short, but brilliant, race of life have run; In winged ships and on the embattled field Alike, they forced the Median bows to yield, Breaking their foremost ranks. Now here they lie,

Their names inscribed on rolls of victory.

THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE. THERE'S naught on earth but flits or fades away, And well indeed the Chian bard might say:"The race of Men is as the race of leaves!" Yet who-though many an ear this truth receives,

Imprints it on his heart? For Hope's fond tongue
Can dupe the old, as it has dup'd the young.
Oh, as we tread on Youth's unfolding flowers,
What wild, impracticable schemes are ours!
Oh, how we chase the shadows, as they fly;
No dread, midst health, of pain or troubles nigh,
No thought, that Man is born to suffer and to die.
Fools! dreamers! not to know how small the
span

Of youth and life allowed to mortal man!
But thou,-let wiser thoughts thy soul employ,
Nor fear, while life endures, life's pleasures to
enjoy.*

ON ANACREON.

THE deathless Bard, to every Muse so dear,
Lies buried, in his native Teos, here-
Anacreon-whose lays, all lays above,
Breathed of the Graces, breathed of every Love.
And now by Lethe's streams, in realms of night,
He sighs; but 'tis not for the sun's sweet light,—
'Tis for the graceful loves he left behind,-
Megistia fair, and Smerdia ever kind.
And still his strains in honied accents flow,
Nor sleeps his lyre amongst the shades below.

*Contrast with the above Elegy Dr. Doddridge's paraphrase of "Dum vivimus vivamus."

"Live while you live"-the Epicure will say-
"And give to pleasure every passing day:"
"Live while you live"-the sacred Preacher cries-
"And give to God each moment as it flies:"
Lord, in my views, let both united be--

I live to pleasure, while I live to Thee!

FRAGMENTS.

I.

MORTAL, dost thou dare to say, What may chance another day? Or thy fellow mortal seeing, Circumscribe his term of being? Swifter than the insect's wings Is the change of mortal things.

Ir.

WHATEVER of virtue or of power,

Or good, or great, we vainly call, Each moment eager to devour,

One vast Charybdis swallows all.

III.

THE first of human joys is Health;
Next, Beauty; and then, honest Wealth;
The fourth, youth's fond delights to prove
With those-[but most with Her]—we love.

IV.

HUMAN strength is unavailing;
Boastful tyranny unfailing;
All in life is care and labour;
And our unrelenting neighbour,
Death, for ever hovering round;
Whose inevitable wound,
When he comes prepar'd to strike,
Good and bad will feel alike.

DANAE.

WHEN the wind, resounding high,
Blustered from the northern sky,
When the waves, in stronger tide,
Dashed against the vessel's side,
Her care-worn cheek with tears bedewed,
Her sleeping infant Danäe viewed;
And, trembling still with new alarms,
Around him cast a mother's arms.
"My child, what wrongs, what woes, are
mine!

But thy young limbs in sleep recline.
In this poor nook all sad and dark,
While lightnings play around our bark,
Thy quiet bosom only knows
The heavy sigh of deep repose.-
The howling wind, the raging sea,
No terror can excite in thee;
The angry surges wake no care,
That burst above thy long deep hair:
But could'st thou feel what I deplore,
Then would I bid thee sleep the more!
Sleep on, sweet boy; still be the deep;―
Oh, could I lull my woe to sleep!
Jove, let thy mighty hand o'erthrow
The baffled malice of my foe;
And may this child, in future years,
Avenge his mother's wrongs and tears!"

Another translation of the Same. WHILST, around her lone ark sweeping, Wailed the winds and waters wild,

Her young cheeks all wan with weeping,
Danäe clasped her sleeping child;
And "alas" (cried she) "my dearest,

What deep wrongs, what woes, are mine; But nor wrongs nor woes thou fearest,

In that sinless rest of thine.
Faint the moonbeams break above thee,
And, within here, all is gloom;
But fast wrapt in arms that love thee,
Little reck'st thou of our doom.
Not the rude spray, round thee flying,
Has e'en damped thy clustering hair,-
On thy purple mantlet lying,

O mine Innocent, my Fair.
Yet, to thee were sorrow sorrow,

Thou would'st lend thy little ear,
And this heart of thine might borrow,
Haply yet a moment's cheer.
But, no; slumber on, Babe, slumber;
Slumber, Ocean-waves; and you,
My dark troubles, without number,—
O, that ye would slumber too!

Though with wrongs they've brimmed my

chalice,

Grant, Jove, that, in future years, This Boy may defeat their malice, And avenge his Mother's tears."

THE MISERIES OF LIFE.

JOVE rules the world, and, with resistless sway,
Demands to-morrow what he gave to-day;
In vain our thoughts to future scenes we cast,
Or only read them darkly in the past;
For Hope enchanting points to new delights,
And charms with dulcet sounds and heavenly
sights;

Expecting yet some fancied bliss to share,
We grasp at bubbles, that dissolve in air,
And some a day, and some whole years, await
The whims and chances of capricious fate;
Nor yet the lovely visions are possest―
Another year remains to make them blest,
While age steals on to sweep their dreams away,
And grim diseases hover round their prey;
Or war, with iron hold, unlocks the grave,
Devouring myriads of the young and brave.
Some on the billows rocked, that roll on high,
Cling to the plank in vain, and wasted die;
Some by the halter lay their miseries down
And rush, unsummoned, to the world unknown.
Our very sweets possess a secret harm,
Teem with distress, and poison while they charm.
The fatal Sisters hover round our birth,
And dash with bitter dregs our cup on earth:
Yet cease to murmur at thy fate in vain,
And in oblivion steep the shaft of pain,

ON ORTHRYADES.

O NATIVE Sparta! when we met the host,
In equal combat, from the Inachian coast,
Thy brave three hundred never turn'd aside,
But where our feet first rested, there we died.
The words, in blood, which brave Orthryades
Wrought on his herald shield, were only these-

"Thyrea is Lacedæmon's!"-If there fled One Argive from the slaughter, be it said, Of old Adrastus he hath learn'd to fly;We count it death to falter,-not to die.

ON A STATUE OF CUPID BY PRAXITELES.
WELL has the sculptor felt what he exprest;
He drew the living model from his breast.
Will not his Phryne the rare gift approve,
Me for myself exchanging, love for love?
Lost are my fabled bow and magic dart;
But, only gazed upon, I win the heart.

ON THE DEATH OF HIPPARCHUS. FAIR was the light, that brighten'd as it grew, Of Freedom, on Athena's favour'd land, When him, the Tyrant, bold Harmodius slew, Link'd with Aristogeiton, hand in hand,

VIRTUE.

ENCIRCLED by her heaven-bright band,
On a rough steep doth Virtue stand,

And he, who hopes to win the goal,
To Manhood's height who would aspire,-
Must spurn each sensual, low desire,
Must never falter, never tire,

But on, with sweat-drops of the soul.*

ON HIS PRESERVATION FROM DEATH BY AN APPARITION.

BEHOLD the Bard's preserver! from the grave The Spectre came, the living man to save.

INSCRIBED ON A CENOTAPH.

O CLOUD-CAPT Geraneia, rock unblest!
Would thou had'st rear'd far hence thy haughty
crest,

By Tanais wild, or wastes where Ister flows;
Nor look'd on Sciron from thy silent snows!
A cold, cold corpse he lies beneath the wave,
This tomb speaks, tenantless, his ocean-grave.

Hesiod has a similar sentiment in his "Works and Days."

Where Virtue dwells, the gods have placed before
The dropping sweat that springs from every pore;
And ere the feet can reach her bright abode,
Long, rugged, dark th' ascent, and rough the road:
The ridge once gain'd, the path, so hard of late,
Runs easy on, and level to the gate.-Elton.
So also Spenser-

In woods, in waves, in wars, She wont to dwell
And will be found with peril and with pain,
Ne can the man, who moulds in idle cell,
Unto her happy mansion e'er attain ;
Before her gate High God did sweat ordain
And wakeful watches ever to abide ;
But easy is the way and passage plain
To Pleasure's palace ;-it may soon be spied,
And, day and night, her doors to all stand open wide.
Faerie Queen, B. ii. c. 3.