Harmony fit for the chosen few, ...
A lightning sent from Sinai and a gleam
From great Olympus, like the mingling sounds
Of David's harp and Pindar's lyre, conversing
In the star-spangled darkness of the night.
At times the poet even raises his song to rapture. Certainly the past
becomes a source of happiness in his "Rhapsody," and life is agleam with
joy in his "Idyl." But most reflective of this power of the poet to
conquer darkness with light and to turn ruins into gleaming palaces of
beauty and of song, is the poem entitled "At the Windmill."
The local color which is by no means a rare characteristic of the poetry
of Palamas is particularly rich in this collection. Many of its songs
are vivid and clear pictures of Greek life. Yet with the touch of
symbolism, he makes such local flashes world-flames. In "The Dead," we
have a faithful description of the Greek custom of exposing the open
coffin with the body in a room whence all furniture is removed. Friends
and relatives are gathered about the dead; even children are not
excluded from paying this last honor to the departed. The windows are
closed, and in the gloom tapers and candles are burning before the
images of the saints and over the flower-covered body, while the smoke
of the incense and the fragrance of the wreaths fill the air. Yet
somehow in the verses of the song one catches the moving sounds of
mourning humanity, the image of death against life.