The wind, the gusts, comb the hair of the water-nymphs. You never tire of seeing it drop, spread, and sweep over the yielding and sensitive surface. The water is full of life, now rising into higher billows which would make your mast crack if you had any, now subsiding into lesser, dashing against and wearing away the still anchored ice, setting many small cakes adrift. How they entertain us with ever-changing scenes in the sky above or on the earth below. If the plowman lean on his plow handle and look up or down, there is danger that he will forget his labor on that day.
March 3, 1838. Homer. Three thousand years and the world so little changed. The Iliad seems like a natural sound which has reverberated to our days. Whatever in it is still freshest in the memories of men was most childlike in the poet. It is the problem of old age, a second childhood exhibited in the life of the world. Phœbus Apollo went like night, ὁ δ’ ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς. This either refers to the gross atmosphere of the plague, darkening the sun, or to the crescent of night, rising solemn and stately in the east, while the sun is setting in the west.
Then Agamemnon darkly lowers on Calchas, prophet of evil, ὄσσε δέ οἱ πυρὶ λαμπετόωντι εΐκτην, such a fire-eyed Agamemnon as you may see at
