the rose,
    You shall find food, drink, odour, all at once;
    Cool leaves to bind about an aching brow. 
    And, never much away, the nightingale. 
    Sing them a strophe, with the turn-again,
    Down to the verse that ends all, proverb like. 
    And save us, thou Balaustion, bless the name”

And she answered:  “I will recite the last play he wrote from first to last—­Alkestis—­his strangest, saddest, sweetest song.”

    Then because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts. 
    And poetry is power,—­they all outbroke
    In a great joyous laughter with much love: 
    “Thank Herakles for the good holiday! 
    Make for the harbour!  Row, and let voice ring,
      ‘In we row, bringing more Euripides!’”
    All the crowd, as they lined the harbour now,
      “More of Euripides!”—­took up the cry. 
    We landed; the whole city, soon astir,
    Came rushing out of gates in common joy
    To the suburb temple; there they stationed me
    O’ the topmost step; and plain I told the play,
    Just as I saw it; what the actors said,
    And what I saw, or thought I saw the while,
    At our Kameiros theatre, clean scooped
    Out of a hill side, with the sky above
    And sea before our seats in marble row: 
    Told it, and, two days more, repeated it
    Until they sent us on our way again
    With good words and great wishes.

So, we see Balaustion’s slight figure under the blue sky, and the white temple of Herakles from the steps of which she spoke; and among the crowd, looking up to her with rapture, the wise and young Sicilian who took ship with her when she was sent back to Athens, wooed her, and found answer before they reached Piraeus.  And there in Athens she and her lover saw Euripides, and told the Master how his play had redeemed her from captivity.  Then they were married; and one day, with four of her girl friends, under the grape-vines by the streamlet side, close to the temple, Baccheion, in the cool afternoon, she tells the tale; interweaving with the play (herself another chorus) what she thinks, how she feels concerning its personages and their doings, and in the comment discloses her character.  The woman is built up in this way for us.  The very excuse she makes for her inserted words reveals one side of her delightful nature—­her love of poetry, her love of beauty, her seeing eye, her delicate distinction, her mingled humility and self-knowledge.

    Look at Baccheion’s beauty opposite,
    The temple with the pillars at the porch! 
    See you not something beside masonry? 
    What if my words wind in and out the stone
    As yonder ivy, the God’s parasite? 
    Though they leap all the way the pillar leads,
    Festoon about the marble, foot to frieze,
    And serpentiningly enrich the roof,
    Toy with some few bees and a bird or two,—­
    What then?  The column holds the cornice up.