His love of political strife and military glory led him to the composition of a class of poems which the ancients called ‘Stasiotica’ (Songs of Sedition).  To this class belong his descriptions of the furnishing of his palace, and many of the fragments preserved to us.  Besides those martial poems, he composed hymns to the gods, and love and convivial songs.

His verses are subjective and impassioned.  They are outbursts of the poet’s own feeling, his own peculiar expression toward the world in which he lived; and it is this quality that gave them their strength and their celebrity.  His metres were lively, and the care which he expended upon his strophes has led to the naming of one metre the ‘Alcaic.’  Horace testifies (Odes ii. 13, ii. 26, etc.), to the power of his master.

The first selection following is a fragment from his ‘Stasiotica.’  It is a description of the splendor of his palace before “the work of war began.”

THE PALACE

From roof to roof the spacious palace halls
Glitter with war’s array;
With burnished metal clad, the lofty walls
Beam like the bright noonday. 
There white-plumed helmets hang from many a nail,
Above, in threatening row;
Steel-garnished tunics and broad coats of mail
Spread o’er the space below. 
Chalcidian blades enow, and belts are here,
Greaves and emblazoned shields;
Well-tried protectors from the hostile spear,
On other battlefields. 
With these good helps our work of war’s begun,
With these our victory must be won.

Translation of Colonel Mure.

A BANQUET SONG

The rain of Zeus descends, and from high heaven
A storm is driven: 
And on the running water-brooks the cold
Lays icy hold;
Then up:  beat down the winter; make the fire
Blaze high and higher;
Mix wine as sweet as honey of the bee
Abundantly;
Then drink with comfortable wool around
Your temples bound. 
We must not yield our hearts to woe, or wear
With wasting care;
For grief will profit us no whit, my friend,
Nor nothing mend;
But this is our best medicine, with wine fraught
To cast out thought.

Translation of J. A. Symonds.

AN INVITATION

Why wait we for the torches’ lights? 
Now let us drink while day invites. 
In mighty flagons hither bring
The deep-red blood of many a vine,
That we may largely quaff, and sing
The praises of the god of wine,
The son of Jove and Semele,
Who gave the jocund grape to be
A sweet oblivion to our woes. 
Fill, fill the goblet—­one and two: 
Let every brimmer, as it flows,
In sportive chase, the last pursue.

Translation of Sir William Jones.

     THE STORM