Editing Alcman (section)

=== Praise for the gods, women, and the natural world===
Regardless of the topic, Alcman's poetry has a clear, light, pleasant tone which ancient commentators have remarked upon.   Details from [[ritual]]s and [[festival]]s are described with care, even though the context of some of those details can no longer be understood.

Alcman's language is rich with visual description.  He describes the yellow color of a woman's hair and the golden chain she wears about her neck; the purple petals of a Kalchas blossom and the purple depths of the sea; the "bright shining" color of the windflower and the multi-colored feathers of a bird as it chews green buds from the vines.

Much attention is focused on nature: ravines, mountains, flowering forests at night, the quiet sound of water lapping over seaweed.  Animals and other creatures fill his lines: birds, horses, bees, lions, reptiles, even crawling insects.

<blockquote>
Asleep lie mountain-top and mountain-gully, shoulder also and ravine; the creeping-things that come from the dark earth, the beasts whose lying is upon the hillside, the generation of the bees, the monsters in the depths of the purple brine, all lie asleep, and with them the tribes of the winging birds.<ref>Edmonds, 1922. pp. 76–77</ref></blockquote>
[[File:Alcedo atthis 1 (Bohuš Číčel).jpg|thumb|206x206px|[[Common kingfisher]]s mating]]
The poet reflects, in a poignant poem, as [[Antigonus of Carystus]] notes, how "age has made him weak and unable to whirl round with the choirs and with the dancing of the maidens", unlike the cock halcyons or ceryls, for "when they grow old and weak and unable to fly, their mates carry them upon their wings":

<blockquote>
No more, O musical maidens with voices ravishing-sweet!<br />
My limbs fail:—Ah that I were but a ceryl borne on the wing<br />
Over the bloom of the wave amid fair young halcyons fleet,<br />
With a careless heart untroubled, the sea-blue bird of the Spring!<ref>Headlam, 1907. [https://archive.org/details/abookgreekverse01headgoog/page/2/mode/2up pp. 2–3]</ref>
</blockquote>