Refreshing indeed it must have been
to them to hear of those simple joys and simple sorrows of the Sicilian
shepherd, in a land where toil was but exercise, and mere existence was
enjoyment. To them, and to us also. I believe Theocritus is one of the
poets who will never die. He sees men and things, in his own light way,
truly; and he describes them simply, honestly, with little careless
touches of pathos and humour, while he floods his whole scene with that
gorgeous Sicilian air, like one of Titian's pictures; with still
sunshine, whispering pines, the lizard sleeping on the wall, and the
sunburnt cicala shrieking on the spray, the pears and apples dropping
from the orchard bough, the goats clambering from crag to crag after the
cistus and the thyme, the brown youths and wanton lasses singing under
the dark chestnut boughs, or by the leafy arch of some
Grot nymph-haunted,
Garlanded over with vine, and acanthus, and clambering roses,
Cool in the fierce still noon, where the streams glance clear in the
moss-beds;
and here and there, beyond the braes and meads, blue glimpses of the
far-off summer sea; and all this told in a language and a metre which
shapes itself almost unconsciously, wave after wave, into the most
luscious song.
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