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The young man spoke of the wearisome walk; and reminded him that Ibycus, the beloved of the gods, was murdered while returning to the city after twilight. But the philosopher replied, "My old limbs are used to fatigue, and everybody knows that the plain robe of Anaxagoras conceals no gold."
The cranes of Ibycus! The phrase flashed into mind. "I wonder why things like that disturb me so!... I wonder if there's any bottom or top to living anyhow!... I wonder !" He looked at the birds and at the violet evening light at play in the old wood. The phrase went out of his mind. He left the remnant of the forest and was presently upon open moor.
"Ibycus, loved of all who love song, traveled alone, but not alone. Yet shepherds, or women with their pitchers at the spring, saw but a poet with a staff and a lyre. Now he was found upon the highroad, and now the country paths drew him, and the solemn woods where men most easily find God. And so he approached Corinth. "The day was calm and bright, with a lofty, blue, and stainless sky.
She was a most welcome auditor to the philosophers, poets, and artists, who were ever fond of gathering round the good old man; and when it was either necessary or proper to remain in her own apartment, there was the treasured wisdom of Thales, Pythagoras, Hesiod, Homer, Simonides, Ibycus, and Pindar. More than one of these precious volumes were transcribed entirely by her own hand.
Perchance the order of the universe is revealed in the story of Thebes rising to the lyre of Amphion; and Ibycus might have spoken sublime truth, when he told of music in the motion of the everlasting stars." Philothea had listened so earnestly, that for a moment all other thoughts were expelled from her mind.
The stream the trees above, the broken, ancient wall, the roofs of the new house that was not so new, the old, outstanding keep. The whole rested, mellowed, lifted, still, against a serene and azure sky. Alexander stood and gazed. "The keep. The pine still knots and clings there by the school-room. Do you remember, Strickland, a day when you set me to read 'The Cranes of Ibycus'?" "I remember."
In order to understand the story of Ibycus which follows it is necessary to remember, first, that the theatres of the ancients were immense fabrics capable of containing from ten to thirty thousand spectators, and as they were used only on festival occasions, and admission was free to all, they were usually filled.
The heart of Ibycus grew warm, and there seemed a brighter light within the light cast by the sun. Flower and plant and tree and all living things seemed to him to be glistening and singing, and to have for him, as he for them, a loving friendship. And, looking up to the sky, he saw, drawn out stringwise, a flight of cranes, addressed to Egypt.
In order to understand the story of Ibycus which follows, it is necessary to remember, first, that the theatres of the ancients were immense buildings providing seats for from ten to thirty thousand spectators, and as they were used only on festal occasions, and admission was free to all, they were usually filled.
The ducks that denounced the poet Ibycus are as nothing in comparison with the single hair that these country spies fasten across the opening of a door by means of two little flattened pills of wax, fixed so high up, or so low down, that the trick is never suspected. If the gallant comes out of his own door and opens the other, the broken hair tells the tale.
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