Here’s my own version, which draws heavily from yours.
πυρεῦς ὁ Ἔρως, ἕλιξ καυστική.
δοῦλος τῷ Ἔρωτι, ἔπεσον.
εἰς ἕλικα ἔπεσον πυράνην.
κατέβην τῆς φλογὸς ἀναβαινούσης.
καταπεφλεγμένος εἰμι τῷ τοῦ πυρός κύκλῳ.
καλὸς ὁ Ἕρως ἡμὶν τοῖς καλοῖς.
ἠράσθην σου, νήπιος!
τὸ δὲ πῦρ ὑπερέφλεγε.
πάντας καίει ἡ περικαὴς ἕλιξ...
Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring.
Bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire.
I fell into a burning ring of fire.
I went down, down, down and the flames went higher.
And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
The ring of fire.
The taste of love is sweet.
When hearts like ours meet.
I fell for you like a child.
Oh, but the fire went wild.
And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
The ring of fire,
The ring of fire,
The ring of fire.
The retired classics professor wrote:
the whole business of converting lyrics into ancient Greek is something I find very troubling. I just think that, to the extent that the original text is really gripping or appealing, the harder it is to carry over the tone into another language -- I think that you have to know both languages very, very well.
I certainly agree that converting these lyrics into Ancient Greek is difficult and to do it well you have to know Greek well. But I would argue that one will never know Greek well until one tries to write it, and that being forced to come up with Greek sentences that represent complex and subtle ideas is a great way to learn the language. One has to start somewhere. I know that you have gotten better at this over the years, as have I. Certain purists will never like this sort of thing, but all I can say is that I would never have learned Ancient Greek to the extent that I have without doing stuff like this. Again and again, when I write a line in Greek, later on I will read something in real Greek that is similar to what I wrote. Often this causes me to reevaluate what I had written, and in this way I come to have a deeper understanding of the language.
Yet I wasn't quite sure about the linkage of that last line with ὡς παῖς συνηψάμην σοῖ: it looked like συνάπτομαι was being used partly in a sense of "ignite" and partly in the sense joining -- but I don't see that in LSJ.
Well, as I already told you before reading this retired professor's criticism, I understood right away what you meant here. LSJ is great, and I use it all the time to check usage, but Ancient Greek is a living language. There has to be some freedom to create new usages that are not NECESSARILY attested in the extent sources. Aeschylus did not always check LSJ before using a word and we don't need to either.
After playing around with it a bit, I came up with this for the opening sequence:
῎Ερως φλογιστικος
πυρὸς ποιεῖ κύκλον·
πόθῳ μαινόμενος
εἰς πυρὸς κύκλον αὐτὸς ἐπήδησα.
Very nice! Maybe you should convince this guy to come out of retirement!
ερρωσο!