s to the lofty range of Kiona.
This is the background of one of Palamas' "Hundred Voices," a collection
of short lyrics in the volume entitled _Life Immovable_:

Far glimmered the sea, and the harvest darkened the threshing
floors;
I cared not for the harvest and looked not on the threshing floors;
For I stood on the end of the sea, and thee I beheld from afar,
O white, ethereal Liakoura, waiting that from thy midst
Parnassus, the ancient, shine forth and the Nine Fair Sisters of
Song.
Yet, what if the fate of Parnassus is changed? What if the Nine Fair
Sisters are gone?
Thou standest still, O Liakoura, young and for ever one,
O thou Muse of a future Rhythm and a Beauty still to be born.

To his birth place, the poet dedicates one of his collection of sonnets
entitled "Fatherlands" and contained in the same volume. It is the first
of the series:

Where with its many ships the harbor moans,
The land spreads beaten by the billows wild,
Remembering not even as a dream
Her ancient silkworks, carriers of wealth.

The vineyards, filled with fruit, now make her rich;
And on her brow, an aged crown she wears,
A castle that the strangers, Franks or Turks,
Thirst for, since Venice founded it with might.

O'er her a mountain stands, a sleepless watch;
And white like dawn, Parnassus shimmers far
Aloft with midland Zygos at his side.

Here I first opened to the day mine eyes;
And here my memory weaves a dream dream-born,
An image faint, half-vanished, fair--a mother.

MISSOLONGHI

But in Patras, the child did not stay long. His early home seems to have
been broken up by the death of his mother, and we find him next in
Missolonghi, another glorious spot in the history of Modern Greece. It
does not pride itself on its antiquity. It developed late in the Middle
Ages from a fishing hamlet colonized by people who were attracted by the
abundance of fish in the lagoon separating the town from the sea. This
lagoon lies across the Corinthian Gulf to the northwest of Patras,
hardly an hour's sail from it. Its shallow waters, which can be
traversed only by small flat-bottomed dories propelled with poles,
extend between the mouths of the Phidaris and the Achelooes, and are
studded with small islets just emerging above the face of the lagoon and
covered with rushes. Two of these islets, Vassiladi and Kleisov