who knew the poet, I went to see him one April afternoon
in his office at the University with my friend and fellow traveller, Mr.
Francis P. Farquhar. Mr. Palamas was sitting at his official desk; but
as soon as we entered he rose to receive us and then sat modestly in the
corner of a sofa. He had changed very little in appearance since the
time of the riots, and the more I looked at him the more I recognized
the very same image which I had kept in my mind from the first encounter
I had with him in the University colonnade ten years before. Perhaps,
the furrows of his brow had now become deeper; the white hairs, more
numerous. His eyes were still the same fiery eyes penetrating wherever
they lit beneath the surface of things and often turning away from the
present into the world of thought. His hands moved quietly; his voice
was clear and sonant; his words were few and polite. Unassuming in his
manner, he seemed more eager to receive knowledge than to talk about
himself and his work. He asked us questions about America and its
literary life: Is Poe read and appreciated? Is Walt Whitman still
popular? He admired them both; he had a great craving for the new; and
to read things about America fascinated him. When we rose to leave, we
realized that we had been doing the talking, but on both of us the
personality of the man, reserved and unobstrusive though he was, had
made a deep and lasting impression.

This was the only visit I had with him. But I saw him more than once
walk in the streets of Athens and among the plane trees of Zappeion by
the banks of Ilissus, or sitting alone at a table of some unfrequented
coffeehouse, always far from the crowd. It was only after I had returned
to America that I wrote to him for permission to translate some of his
works. The answer came laden with the same modesty which is so prominent
a characteristic of the man. He is afraid I am exaggerating the value of
his work, and he calls himself a mere laborer of the verse. Certainly he
has been a faithful laborer for a cause which a generation ago seemed
hopeless. But through his faith and power, he has snatched the crown of
victory from the hands of Time, and he may now be acclaimed as a new
World-Poet.

"The poetic work of Kostes Palamas," says Eugene Clement, a French
critic, in a recent article on the poet, "presents itself today with an
imposing greatness. Without speaking about his early collections, in
which already a talent of singu