The Praise Singer Read Online Free PDF Page B

when he had got a Kean shepherd lad, tough as a goat, he took all the care he wished he had taken before. I never once slept in an outhouse, unless by mishap he had to shake down there himself; when offered hospitality, he had me received as a guest as well. His own son could have lived no better; and my father’s son had never lived half so well.
    People think the bond between poet and pupil is forged by the holy Muse. Quite true; but nothing forges it tighter than traveling among strangers. Friends met by the way will soon pass on; on the whole, there are just the two of you. If you are out of tune, it can’t last long. But if it wears well, it will be like father and son. Closer, for me. My blood-father saw that at the start. Well, I could not help it.
    My tasks were a game to me, compared with what I had done at home. Kleobis, sensible man, always traveled as light as his purse, only gathering stuff when he could afford to hire a donkey. We never went without clothing for heat or cold, and best clothes for a performance; but it did not weigh so heavy as a three-month lamb on the mountain.
    Had I been serving only a craftsman or a merchant, I would have found things to enjoy: steep islands, still and dark in a laughing sea; white harbors full of strange ships; a road creeping small into dark blue mountains; a pleasant inn in a poplar grove by a river; the terrible filthy inn where they tried to rob us, and I pulled out Theas’ knife. After that, Kleobis treated me like a man.
    I only missed one thing from my former life?: for a long time I hated to sleep alone. My mother took against me from the moment the midwife held me up to her; once I was weaned, if I cried in the night her remedy was a slap. But Theas, who was no more than six or seven, would creep up softly and take me into bed, as he might have done a squeaking pup. Soon I would climb in of my own accord, and like a soft-hearted child with a growing pup, he let me be. So there I stayed, feeling safe with him like a dog. For months I felt restless and strange without him, and would wake in the darkness wondering where he was.
    All this was the daily bread of my life. The meat and wine were the songs.
    Excellent men, concerned with the training of youth to virtue, have begged me to declare that art is the child of labor. Well, labor must bring it forth, like everything else that lives. As I tell these people, there are women one can’t get without taking pains, or boys if you prefer them; but first you must fall in love. After that, the pains take care of themselves. So don’t bring me, I say to these worthy men, some youth who wants to know what kind of song is likely to win the crown this year; or what everyone else is singing, lest he should feel lonely. If that is all he wants, I’ve no time left to waste on him. Take him away, and apprentice him to a lyre-maker, where he may even be of use. But if you come upon someone who grabs at song like a child at a bright stone on the shore, who shapes and reshapes like a child building a sand-castle, deep in his act and lost to all around-then, never mind if his sand-castle leans sideways, just give him time. Don’t tell him that this year people are doing, or not doing, or no longer doing, this or that. Send him to me, who will protect him from fools like you, will show him the great shell-beaches and watch him at his play.
    Oh yes, I worked. Yes indeed. Looking back on my father’s last instruction, not to do things the easy way, I used to laugh aloud. In our calling, once you know where you’re going, there is no easy way; you get there, or not. Even if you aim to go no further than four lines on a dog’s tomb. Well, for that matter, I have gone a good way in four lines, and further still in two.
    However, at that age it still took me ten lines at least to say “Good dog.” All I was fit for was to learn, but at least I knew it. I gorged like a calf in a spring meadow; not only Kleobis’ lessons, but