Anacreon had no politics, no earnest interest in the affairs of life, no
morals in the large meaning of that word, no aims reaching further than
the merriment and grace of the moment. Loving luxury and leisure, he was
the follower of a pleasure-loving court. His cares are that the bowl is
empty, that age is joyless, that women tell him he is growing gray. He
is closely paralleled in this by one side of Béranger; but the
Frenchman's soul had a passionately earnest half which the Greek
entirely lacked. Nor is there ever any outbreak of the deep yearning,
the underlying melancholy, which pervades and now and then interrupts,
like a skeleton at the feast, the gayest verses of Omar Khayyam.

His metres, like his matter, are simple and easy. So imitators, perhaps
as brilliant as the master, have sprung up and produced a mass of songs;
and at this time it remains in doubt whether any complete poem of
Anacreon remains untouched. For this reason the collection is commonly
termed 'Anacreontics'. Some of the poems are referred to the school of
Gaza and the fourth century after Christ, and some to the secular
teachings and refinement of the monks of the Middle Ages. Since the
discovery and publication of the text by Henry Stephens, in 1554, poets
have indulged their lighter fancies in such songs, and a small
literature of delicate trifles now exists under the name of
'Anacreontics' in Italian, German, and English. Bergk's recension of the
poems appeared in 1878. The standard translations, or rather imitations
in English, are those of Cowley and Moore. The Irish poet was not unlike
in nature to the ancient Ionian. Moore's fine voice in the London
drawing-rooms echoes at times the note of Anacreon in the men's quarters
of Polycrates or the symposia of Hipparchus. The joy of feasting and
music, the color of wine, and the scent of roses, alike inspire the
songs of each.