Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/406

 382 LITERATURE OF ANCEINT GREECE their water everywhere : a little dew from a holy fount, the highest bloom of the flower!' The other would be Medea's answer when Jason proposes to plead for mercy with her father Aietes, and to make covenant for her hand, as Theseus once sued for Ariadne from Minos : — " Speak not of ruth nor pact. They dwell not here. Aiites keeps no bond, nor knoivs no fear, Nor walks with men as Minos walked of old ; And I am no Greek princess gentle-souled. — One only thing : when thou art saved and free. Think of Medea, and I will think of thee Always, though all forbid. And be there heard Some voice frotn far away, or some zvild bird Come crying on the day I am forgot. Or may the storm-winds hear, and spurn me not, And lift me in their ar?ns through wastes of sky To face thee in thy falseness, and otic e cry, ' / saved thee! Yea, a-sudden at thy hall And hearthstone may I stand when those daysfallP Apollonius is, of course, subject to the vices of his age. He has long picture-like descriptions, he has a tiresome amount of pseudo - Homeric language, he has passages about the toilette of Aphrodite and the archery of Eros which might have been written by Ovid or Cowley. But there is a genuine originality and power of personal observation and feeling in him ; witness the similes about the Oriental child-wife whose husband is killed, the wool-worker bending over the fire for light as she labours before sunrise, the wild thoughts that toss in Medea's heart like the reflected light dancing from troubled water, the weird reaping of the Earth- children in the fire of sunset — which force us to admit that in him Greece found expression for things that had been mute ever before. And for romantic love on the higher side he is without a peer even in the age of Theocritus.