And golden chalices
Of flowers, and fruitage fair,
Scenting the breezy air,
Is laden. There, with horses and with play,
With games and lyres, they while the hours away.

On every side around
Pure happiness is found,
With all the blooming beauty of the world;
There fragrant smoke, upcurled
From altars where the blazing fire is dense
With perfumed frankincense,
Burned unto gods in heaven,
Through all the land is driven,
Making its pleasant place odorous
With scented gales, and sweet airs amorous.

* * * * *

II. THE DRAMA.

One of the most striking proofs that we possess of the rapid
growth and expansion of the Greek mind, is found in the rise
of the Drama, a new kind of poetical composition, which united
the leading features of every species before cultivated, in a
new whole "breathing a rhetorical, dialectical, and ethical spirit"
--a branch of literature that peculiarly characterized the era
of Athenian greatness. Its elements were found in the religious
festivals celebrated in Greece from the earliest ages, and
especially in the feast of Bacchus, where sacred odes of a grave