Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/171

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IN EXILE.
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the Ithacan princess of that name, for he takes Cyrnus to witness, in a quaint fashion enough, that

"Of all good things in human life,Nothing can equal goodness in a wife.In our own case we prove the proverb true;You vouch for me, my friend, and I for you."—(F.)

It must be allowed that this is a confirmation, under the circumstances, of the poet's dictum, "that absence is not death to those that love; "but still one is tempted to wonder what their wives at Megara thought of these restless, revolution-mongering husbands, as they beheld them in the mind's eye hobbing and nobbing over treason in some "Leicester Square" tavern of Euboea or of Thebes. In such téte-à-tétes Theognis, no doubt, was great in aesthetics as well as moralities; and the sole deity still left to reverence, Hope, became more winsome to his fancy as he dwelt on the refinements he had to forego, now that he was bereft of home and property. The following fragment represents this state of feeling:—

"For human nature Hope remains aloneOf all the deities—the rest are flown.Faith is departed; Truth and Honour dead;And all the Graces too, my friend, are fled.The scanty specimens of living worthDwindled to nothing and extinct on earth.Yet while I live and view the light of heaven(Since Hope remains, and never hath been drivenFrom the distracted world) the single scopeOf my devotion is to worship Hope:Where hecatombs are slain, and altars burn,With all the deities adored in turn,
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