Faint now as his voice are the voices of the shepherds who are gone,
youth and maiden and children; dimly I see them, vaguely I hear them; at
last there remains only "the hoar sea's infinite spray." And will you
say it was in truth all a dream? Were the poor fisherman in their toil
alone real, and the rest airy nothings to whom Sicily gave a local
habitation and a name? It was Virgil's dream and Spenser's; and some
secret there was--something still in our breasts--that made it immortal,
so that to name the Sicilian Muses is to stir an infinite, longing
tenderness in every young and noble heart that the gods have softened
with sweet thoughts.

And here I shut in my pages the one laurel leaf that Taormina bore. She,
too, in her centuries has had her poet. Perhaps none who will see these
words ever gave a thought to the name and fame of Cornelius Severus. Few
of his works remain, and little is known of his life. He is said to have
been the friend of Pollio, and to have been present in the Sicilian war
between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. He wrote the first book of an epic
poem on that subject, so excellent that it has been thought that, had
the entire work been continued at the same level, he would have held the
second place among the Latin epic poets. He wrote also heroic songs, of
which fragments survive, one of which is an elegy upon Cicero, which
Seneca quotes, saying of him, "No one out of so many talented men
deplored the death of Cicero better than Cornelius Severus." Some
dialogues in verse also seem to have been written by him. These
fragments may not he easily obtained. But take down your Virgil; and, if
it be like this of mine which I brought from Rome, you will find at the
very end, last of the shorter pieces ascribed to the poet, one of the
length of a book of the "Georgics," called "Etna." This is the work of
Cornelius Severus. An early death took from him the perfection of his
genius and the hope of fame; but happy was the fortune of him who wrote