You bid me lift my mean desires
    From faltering lips and fitful veins
  To sexless souls, ideal choirs,
    Unwearied voices, wordless strains;
  My mind with fonder welcome owns
  One dear dead friend’s remembered tones.

  Forsooth the present we must give
    To that which cannot pass away;
  All beauteous things for which we live
    By laws of time and space decay. 
  But oh, the very reason why
  I clasp them, is because they die.

The preacher has been talking to his congregation about the joys of Heaven.  There, he says, there will be no quarrelling, no contest, no falsehood, and all evil dispositions will be entirely changed to good.  The poet answers, “This world and this life are full of beauty and of joy for me.  I do not want to die, I want to live.  I do not wish to go to that cold region of stars about which you teach.  I only know this world and I find in it warm hearts and precious affection.  You say that this world is a phantom, unsubstantial, unreal, and that the only reality is above, in Heaven.  To me that Heaven appears but as an awful emptiness.  I shrink from it in terror, and like a child seek for consolation in human love.  It is no use to talk to me about angels until you can prove to me that angels can feel happier than men.  I prefer to remain with human beings.  You say that I ought to wish for higher things than this world can give, that here minds are unsteady and weak, hearts fickle and selfish, and you talk of souls without sex, imaginary concerts of perfect music, tireless singing in Heaven, and the pleasure of conversation without speech.  But all the happiness that we know is received from our fellow beings.  I remember the voice of one dead friend with deeper love and pleasure than any images of Heaven could ever excite in my mind.”

The last stanza needs no paraphrasing, but it deserves some comment, for it is the expression of one great difference between the old Greek feeling in regard to life and death, and all modern religious feeling on the same subject.  You can read through hundreds of beautiful inscriptions which were placed over the Greek tombs.  They are contained in the Greek Anthology.  You will find there almost nothing about hope of a future life, or about Heaven.  They are not for the most part sad; they are actually joyous in many cases.  You would say that the Greek mind thought thus about death—­“I have had my share of the beauty and the love of this world, and I am grateful for this enjoyment, and now it is time to go to sleep.”  There is actually an inscription to the effect, “I have supped well of the banquet of life.”  The Eastern religions, including Christianity, taught that because everything in the world is uncertain, impermanent, perishable, therefore we ought not to allow our minds to love worldly things.  But the Greek mind, as expressed by the old epigraphy in the cemeteries, not less than by the teaching of Mimnermus, took exactly