INTO STRANGE PRESENCE OF THE THINGS THAT ARE.
YET KNOW THAT EVEN AMID THIS JARRING NOISE
OF HATES, LOVES, CREEDS, TOGETHER HEAPED AND HURLED,
SOME ECHO FAINT OF GRACE AND GRANDEUR STIRS
FROM THY SWEET HELLAS, HOME OF NOBLE JOYS.
FIRST FRUIT AND BEST OF ALL OUR WESTERN WORLD;
WHATE'ER WE HOLD OF BEAUTY, HALF IS HERS.




INTRODUCTION.


Probably no poet of importance equal or approaching to that of Pindar
finds so few and so infrequent readers. The causes are not far to
seek: in the first and most obvious place comes the great difficulty
of his language, in the second the frequent obscurity of his thought,
resulting mainly from his exceeding allusiveness and his abrupt
transitions, and in the third place that amount of monotony which must
of necessity attach to a series of poems provided for a succession of
similar occasions.

It is as an attempt towards obviating the first of these hindrances
to the study of Pindar, the difficulty of his language, that this
translation is of course especially intended. To whom and in what
cases are translations of poets useful? To a perfect scholar in the
original tongue they are superfluous, to one wholly ignorant of it
they are apt to be (unless here and there to a Keats) meaningless,
flat, and puzzling. There remains the third class of those who have a