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

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THE REDWOOD 11 single meadow with tender colors, but let him not have Tennyson ' s sense of something subtly interfused. Shepherd-like indeed was the man of whom Wordsworth intoned : A primrose by a river ' s brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing- more. This is precisely the pastoral outlook. Theocritus is charmed by the prim- rose, but he is content to consider only, that in odor and color it is fair. Yet despite the obvious limits of his art, the poet of Sicily sang wondrous- ly well, to have covered the scope of the bucolic entirely. He left little to be further developed, and the sweetest poets of later years have been the disci- ples of Theocritus. ' Adu — sweet — begins the first Idyll: Sweet is the murmuring ' whisper of yonder pine by the sources. The word seems to have charmed Theocritus, who, like Francis Thompson, found in it an expression of subtle and simple beauty, of gentle splendor which distilleth as the dew. And lying in summer fields, he exclaimed: Sweet is the heifer ' s lowing and sweet is the heifer ' s breath, And sweet in summer to lie by a brook that murmureth. Thirty Idylls of Theocritus remains to us, besides numerous epigrams or shorter poems, first of which is the following: Thick growing thyme and roses wet with dew Are sacred to the sisterhood divine Of Helicon; the laurel, dark of hue, The Delphian laurel, Pythian Paean, thine! For thee shall bleed the white ram which doth chew The downward hanging branch of turpentine. The Idyll of Hylas is in the manner of a short story : Hylas was a stripling, full of youthful grace. Heracles loved him well, and was never apart from him at all, from morning to the bird-silent eve. With Jason in the bulwarked Argo these two set out for Colchis, and after long sailing they made harbor in the Propontis. The tired sailors lay prone upon the grass of the shore, while Hylas went forth with a jar to find water for the supper of Heracles. He spied a spring in a low-lying hollow: Round its brim there grew a host of rushes, and dark blue Celandine rose, and pale-green maiden-hair and parsley Throve, and the witch grass tangling wild thru watery places. In this pool dwelt three nymphs. And for love of the Argive boy, while he was filling his jar, they pulled him down into the dark water. Soon Her- acles came seeking the long-tarrying Hylas, and thrice he called the name Hylas in the woody solitude. And Hylas heard him in the cool depths, and a thin voice came from the wave , answering him. But to Heracles the sound seemed travelling down long and distant aisles of the wood, and he sped away wildly, his feet leading him, ranging cliffs and thickets. Meanwhile the young men were setting the sails of the Argo and the wind, rising at midnight, filled them, and the curved ship abandoned her moor- ing and went away. And the Argonauts joyfully felt the sea mist on their faces, while Heracles still wandered sadly in the lonely desert. Alas, poor Heracles! Bereft of Hylas, now, from dawn until evening, Onward he trudged on foot to Colchis and welcomeless Phasis. Despite the rivalry of Vergil, piping mightily for supremacy on a contig-

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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

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12 THE REDWOOD nous hillside, a sweet contest of dulcent elashings, united with that of the pastoral chorus of the fairest centuries of poetry, Theocritus yet remains pre- eminently enlaureled, the sincerest artist of the beautiful. While other poets have been allured by the charm of the subjective lyric expression, Theocritus has been content with careful colors to depict Nature faithfully. For a world, weary of too much philosophy, Milton composed his invocation to this poet: Return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. But we are lingering too long upon those things from which the asphodel bloom of Theocritus does not wholly spring. Let us prescind from what mat- ter he sang, and what light he viewed nature in, and judge him rather on the downright sweetness of his tones, wherein lies largely the poetic merit. Here he does not fail : Sweet is the murmuring- whisper of yonder pine by the sources. Sweet, in truth, O sing-er: but not less mellow thy music. The Rainbow Builder By Thomas Higgins, ' 24. Pretty little sunbeam where were you When the rainy skies hung low? I was in the azure seeking all the while For the rarest tints to paint the great rainbow.