Or again thou wouldst wander with dusty feet through the ways that the dust makes silent,while the breath of the kine,as they were driven forth with the morning,came fresh to thee,and the trailing dewy branch of honeysuckle struck sudden on thy cheek.Thou wouldst see the Dawn awake in rose and saffron across the waters,and Etna,grey and pale against the sky,and the setting crescent would dip strangely in the glow,on her way to the sea.Then,methinks,thou wouldst murmur,like thine own Simaetha,the love-lorn witch,"Farewell,Selene,bright and fair;farewell,ye other stars,that follow the wheels of the quiet Night."Nay,surely it was in such an hour that thou didst behold the girl as she burned the laurel leaves and the barley grain,and melted the waxen image,and called on Selene to bring her lover home.Even so,even now,in the islands of Greece,the setting Moon may listen to the prayers of maidens."Bright golden Moon,that now art near the waters,go thou and salute my lover,he that stole my love,and that kissed me,saying "Never will I leave thee."And lo,he hath left me as men leave a field reaped and gleaned,like a church where none cometh to pray,like a city desolate."So the girls still sing in Greece,for though the Temples have fallen,and the wandering shepherds sleep beneath the broken columns of the god's house in Selinus,yet these ancient fires burn still to the old divinities in the shrines of the hearths of the peasants.
It is none of the new creeds that cry,in the dirge of the Sicilian shepherds of our time,"Ah,light of mine eyes,what gift shall Isend thee,what offering to the other world?The apple fadeth,the quince decayeth,and one by one they perish,the petals of the rose.
I will send thee my tears shed on a napkin,and what though it burneth in the flame,if my tears reach thee at the last."Yes,little is altered,Theocritus,on these shores beneath the sun,where thou didst wear a tawny skin stripped from the roughest of he-goats,and about thy breast an old cloak buckled with a plaited belt.Thou wert happier there,in Sicily,methinks,and among vines and shadowy lime-trees of Cos,than in the dust,and heat,and noise of Alexandria.What love of fame,what lust of gold tempted thee away from the red cliffs,and grey olives,and wells of black water wreathed with maidenhair?
The music of thy rustic flute Kept not for long its happy country tone;Lost it too soon,and learned a stormy note Of men contention tost,of men who groan,Which tasked thy pipe too sore,and tired thy throat -It failed,and thou wast mute!
What hadst thou to make in cities,and what could Ptolemies and Princes give thee better than the goat-milk cheese and the Ptelean wine?Thy Muses were meant to be the delight of peaceful men,not of tyrants and wealthy merchants,to whom they vainly went on a begging errand."Who will open his door and gladly receive our Muses within his house,who is there that will not send them back again without a gift?And they with naked feet and looks askance come homewards,and sorely they upbraid me when they have gone on a vain journey,and listless again in the bottom of their empty coffer they dwell with heads bowed over their chilly knees,where is their drear abode,when portionless they return."How far happier was the prisoned goat-herd,Comatas,in the fragrant cedar chest where the blunt-faced bees from the meadow fed him with food of tender flowers,because still the Muse dropped sweet nectar on his lips!
Thou didst leave the neat-herds and the kine,and the oaks of Himera,the galingale hummed over by the bees,and the pine that dropped her cones,and Amaryllis in her cave,and Bombyca with her feet of carven ivory.Thou soughtest the City,and strife with other singers,and the learned write still on thy quarrels with Apollonius and Callimachus,and Antagoras of Rhodes.So ancient are the hatreds of poets,envy,jealousy,and all unkindness.
Not to the wits of Courts couldst thou teach thy rural song,though all these centuries,more than two thousand years,they have laboured to vie with thee.There has come no new pastoral poet,though Virgil copied thee,and Pope,and Phillips,and all the buckram band of the teacup time;and all the modish swains of France have sung against thee,as the SOW CHALLENGED ATHENE.They never knew the shepherd's life,the long winter nights on dried heather by the fire,the long summer days,when over the parched grass all is quiet,and only the insects hum,and the shrunken burn whispers a silver tune.Swains in high-heeled shoon,and lace,shepherdesses in rouge and diamonds,the world is weary of all concerning them,save their images in porcelain,effigies how unlike thy golden figures,dedicate to Aphrodite,of Bombyca and Battus!Somewhat,Theocritus,thou hast to answer for,thou that first of men brought the shepherd to Court,and made courtiers wild to go a Maying with the shepherds.
