64 Idylls of the Field. 



graceful nymphs peer shyly out through the wild 

 orange-trees. 



Listen ! how in the dark thickets the blackcaps sing ! 



To them, too, it is a garden of delight, a lotos-land 



too fair to leave. And among the broken music of 



their dulcet strains the ear of fancy feigns the chorus — 



' We will return no more.' 



Do they ever sing to each other here in this sober 

 English woodland of that paradise that, stretching far 

 along those sunny slopes, makes the wreck of 

 Hadrian's magnificent villa more glorious now in 

 the splendour of its ruin than when the stout-hearted 

 Emperor died unwept upon the shore at Baias ? 



Its costly marbles are scattered to the winds, but 

 the ivy and the creeper have draped with rarer beauty 

 the ruined arches with their bright festoons ; flower 

 and fern have crowned the crumbling walls with 

 waving plumes. 



And in place of rare mosaics, once the wonder of 

 the world, the warm sun of April has scattered bright 

 anemones — crimson, white, and blue — broadcast in 

 the rich green grass. 



And in the roofless halls, where once in peerless 

 beauty shone the triumphs of the sculptor's art, the 

 coronella, mingling with the dark foliage of the ilex, 

 droops its scented gold. The wind that wanders 

 through the silent corridors is heavy with the breath 

 of flowers. 



Across the sunny spaces in the ruins flit bright- 



