University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword 3 Dedication 4 Faculty 6 Literary 9 Classes 41 Organizations 61 Passion Play . 81 Athletics 89 Chronicle .108

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10 THE REDWOOD Theocritus of Cos By A. J. Steiss, Jr., ' 26. N Sicily at Syracuse Theocritus was born about three centuries before Christ, whence in boyhood he removed to the Island of Cos in the blue sea, where he wrote the first Idylls of the field and fold . Let us call him, then, Theocritus of Cos, for Syracuse and Alexandria yield less important memories of the poet. Theocritus was not a shepherd; perhaps all the experience of the young poet in the realm of Pan and of the field deities came to him while he dwelt upon the Island of Cos, and in these years he stored in his mind impressions of natural sweetness, which fleeting glimpses of beauty in later scenes sent flowing from the deep fountain of his memory. Here he heard water flow Like music broken over rocks. With streams he was particularly enamoured. Lying by the rivulets of (Jos he dreamed of Water cool that Aetna sends From high white snows, down dark deep-wooded slopes. And pondering upon the charm of flowing water, he often sent his fancy wan- dering Up to the farthest ridge of the fountained hills. The pastoral impressions instilled into the mind of Theocritus by his life on Cos were no doubt definite, for he remained here till youth had gone, and with it the ability to be enchanted: Youth now flees on feathered foot Faint and fainter sounds the flute, Rarer songs of gods. In early manhood he returned to Sicily, continuing his bucolic poems, and from this period he spent a good deal of his time in cities and royal courts. The poet was no doubt a cultured and polished gentleman. In Cos he knew Philetas and Asclepiades of Samos and Aratus of Cicilia. To Hiero of Syra- cuse he made suit for recognition, no doubt extolling the monarch in poetry. But labor and lamenting availed not, His poems came back to him, and he put them away sadly in his coffers, rejected Graces, heads on chill knees bowed. He next courted the favor of Ptolemy Philadelphia in Alexandria, and being successful he left Sicily and abode there until his death. Thou mayst not take thy songs with thee to the silent land, wrote The- ocritus. And when he died he had poured forth all his treasury; no pastoral note is refluent; no color of the mead or charm of windy heavens or any rustic sweetness has eluded his delighted eye. True it is, indeed, that pastoral poetry is limited; and Pan has few stops upon his echoing reed; but all the country- side is charmed with his clear piping. It is the voice of Titania ' s wilderness, ever sweet to humans: not reasonably, for it is old in its beauty, but sweet, forsooth, because it is enchanted. And not alone in pastoral theme, but in pastoral simplicity the poet of the beechen bower is limited. He must make idylls or little pictures : let him sing the odor of the new turned mould or the beauty of nature flowering in a