Half a century later, when the form had been much cultivated, John Phillips (1631-1706) laid down the arbitrary rule that an anacreontic line "consists of seven syllables, without being tied to any certain law of quantity." In the 18th century, the antiquary William Oldys (1696-1761) was the author of a little piece which is the perfect type of an anacreontic; this begins:
- "Busy, curious, thirsty fly,
- Drink with me, and drink as I;
- Freely welcome to my cup,
- Could'st thou sip and sip it up.
- Make the most of life you may;
- Life is short and wears away."
In 1800 Thomas Moore published a collection of erotic anacreontics which are also typical in form; Moore speaks of the necessity of catching "the careless facility with which Anacreon appears to have trifled," as a reason why anacreontics are often tame and worthless. He dwells, moreover, on the absurdity of writing "pious anacreontics," a feat, however, which was performed by several of the Greek Christian poets, and in particular by Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus.
References
See also
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Monday June 16, 2008 at 02:23:38 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2009, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
