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’Twas for a god and for no earthly queen.

Hence with it all! Then dark my youthful head,

Where now scant locks of whitening hair instead,

Reminders of a grave old age, are shed.

I gathered roses while the roses blew,

Playtime is past, my play is ended too.

Awake, my heart! and worthier aims pursue.

W. M. Hardinge (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1878).

My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the “Leslie” in Mallock’s New Republic. Another version of Plato’s beautiful epigram (which was addressed to “Aster,” or “Star”) is the following by Professor Darnley Naylor:

Thou gazest on the stars, my Star;

Oh! might I be

The starry sky with myriad eyes

To gaze on thee!

The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4,500 short poems by about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one thousand seven hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D. At first these poems were epigrams—using the word “epigram” in its original sense, as a verse intended to be inscribed on a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead person or important event. Later they included poems on any subject, so long as they contained one fine thought couched in concise language. Still later any short lyric was included.