"Sweet, methinks, is the whispering sound of yonder pine-tree," so,
Theocritus, with that sweet word [Greek text], didst thou begin and
strike the keynote of thy songs. "Sweet," and didst thou find aught
of sweet, when thou, like thy Daphnis, didst "go down the stream,
when the whirling wave closed over the man the Muses loved, the man
not hated of the Nymphs"? Perchance below those waters of death
thou didst find, like thine own Hylas, the lovely Nereids waiting
thee, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia with her April eyes. In the
House of Hades, Theocritus, doth there dwell aught that is fair, and
can the low light on the fields of asphodel make thee forget thy
Sicily? Nay, methinks thou hast not forgotten, and perchance for
poets dead there is prepared a place more beautiful than their
dreams. It was well for the later minstrels of another day, it was
well for Ronsard and Du Bellay to desire a dim Elysium of their own,
where the sunlight comes faintly through the shadow of the earth,
where the poplars are duskier, and the waters more pale than in the
meadows of Anjou.

There, in that restful twilight, far remote from war and plot, from
sword and fire, and from religions that sharpened the steel and lit
the torch, there these learned singers would fain have wandered with
their learned ladies, satiated with life and in love with an
unearthly quiet. But to thee, Theocritus, no twilight of the Hollow
Land was dear, but the high suns of Sicily and the brown cheeks of
the country maidens were happiness enough. For thee, therefore,
methinks, surely is reserved an Elysium beneath the summer of a far-
off system, with stars not ours and alien seasons. There, as Bion
prayed, shall Spring, the thrice desirable, be with thee the whole