A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

144 The Poets and the Philosophers
THE ARMORY
This poem
Alcaeus wrote
to encourage
his comrades
in a civil war.
The spacious hall in brazen splendor gleams,
And all the house in Ares' honor beams.
The helmets ghtter; high upon the wall
The nodding plumes of snowy horse's hair,
Man's noblest ornaments, wave over all;
And brightly gleaming brazen greaves are there,
Each hanging safe upon its hidden nail,
A sure defence against the arrowy hail.
And many coats of mail, and doublets stout,
Breast-plates of new-spun linen, hollow shields,
Well-worn and brought from foe-abandoned fields,
And broad Chalcidian swords are stacked about.
Bear well in mind these tools of war, they make
Easy and sure the work we undertake.
ALC^US PROPOSES A MORNING SAIL
A newly discovered
fragment
of
Alcaeus, translated
by
Edmonds,
Classical
Review, xxiii.
72-4.
The scene is
a window
opening on a
harbor
in the forenoon
of a hot
summer day.
Alcaeus urges
his friend
to come out
for a sail.
The friend
is too lazy
to budge.
Mix no more into the great bowl. Why toilest so,
when I tell thee that never will I have thee waste the day
from dawn onward in drunkenness and song? O why do we
forbear to use the sea, suffering the winter-cool freshness
of the morn to pass like a drunken sleep?
If we would
but quickly go aboard, and take the rudder in our grasp,
and loose the ship from her moorings, turning the sailyard
to front the breeze, then merrier should we be and light
of heart, and 'twould be as good work as a right long
draught of wane. But thou, linking one idle hand in another
over thy robe, sayest. As for me, bring myrrh
for my head; for I am little pleased with what this fellow
putteth into song of his.
Never think thou troublest my
soul, thou wild clamorer, thou roarest like a great fire.