A SUMMER NOON. 95 



thousand times for him and for us the long, tran 

 quil days under the pine and the olive than a great 

 position under Hiero s hand and the weary intrigue 

 and activity which made the melancholy semblance 

 of a successful life for men less wise and genuine. 

 The lines which the hand of Theocritus has left on 

 the past are few and marvelously delicate, but they 

 seem to gain distinctness from the remorseless 

 years that have almost obliterated the features of 

 the age in which he lived. It is better to see 

 clearly one or two things in life than to move con 

 fused and blinded in the dust of an impotent 

 activity ; it is better to hear one or two notes sung 

 in the overshadowing trees than to spend one s years 

 amid a murmur in which nothing is distinctly audi 

 ble. Theocritus, shunning courts and cities, sought 

 to assuage the pain of life at the heart of Nature, 

 and did not seek in vain. He gave himself calmly 

 and sincerely to the sweet and natural life which 

 surrounded him, and in his tranquil self-surrender 

 he gained, unsuspecting, the immortality denied his 

 eager and restless cotemporaries. Life is so vast, 

 so unspeakably rich, that to have reported ac 

 curately one swift glimpse, or to have preserved 

 the melody of one rarely heard note, is to have 

 mastered a part of the secret of the immortals. 



Struggle and anguish have their place in every 

 genuine life, but they are the stages through which 

 it advances to a strength which is full of repose. 

 The bursting of the calyx announces the flower ; 



