f the world for twenty centuries and lifts been
translated into almost every language possessing a literature.

"They all call thee a gipsy, gracious Bombyca, and lean, and
sunburnt;--'tis only I that call thee honey-pale.

"Yea, and the violet is swart and swart the lettered hyacinth; but yet
these flowers are chosen the first in garlands.

"The goat runs after cytisus, the wolf pursues the goat, the crane follows
the plough,--but I am wild for love of thee.

"Would it were mine, all the wealth whereof Croesus was lord, as men tell!
Then images of us, all in gold, should be dedicated to Aphrodite, thou
with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and I in fair attire and new
shoon of Amyclae on both my feet.

"Ah, gracious Bombyca, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice
is drowsy sweet, and thy ways--I can not tell of them."

Even through the disguise of an English prose translation, you will see
how pretty and how simple this little song must have been in the Greek,
and how very natural is the language of it. Our young peasant has fallen
in love with the girl who is employed to play the flute for the reapers,
as the peasants like to work to the sound of music. His comrades do not
much admire Bombyca; one calls her "a long grasshopper of a girl"; another
finds her too thin; a third calls her a gipsy, such a dark brown her skin
has become by constant exposure to the summer sun. And the lover, looking
at her, is obliged to acknowledge in his own mind that she is long and
lean and dark and like a gipsy; but he finds beauty in all these
characteristics, nevertheless. What if she is dark? The sweetest honey is
darkish, like amber, and so are beautiful flowers, the best of all
flowers, flowers given to Aphrodite; and the sacred hyacinth on whose
leaves appear the letters of the word of lamentation "Ai! Ai!"--that is
also dark like Bombyca. Her darkness is that of honey and flowers. What a
charming apology! He cannot deny that she is long and lean, and he remains
silent on these points, but here we must all sympathize with him. He shows
good taste. It is the tall slender girl that is really the most beautiful
and the most graceful, not the large-limbed, strong-bodied peasant type
that his companions would prefer. Without knowing it, he has fallen in
love like an artist. And he is not blind to the, grace of slenderness and
of form, though he cannot express it in artistic language. He can only
compare the sha