. 



trees, and in a moment the spell is on him, 

 and he cares neither to think nor act; he 

 rejoices to lose himself in the universal 

 repose with which Nature refreshes herself. 

 The heat of the day is at its height, but for 

 an hour the burden slips from the shoulders 

 of care, and the rest comes in which the 

 gains of work are garnered. 



The whir of the locust high overhead, 

 by some earlier association, always recalls 

 that matchless singer, some of whose notes 

 Nature has never regained in all these later 

 years. The whir of the cicada and the 

 white light on the remote country road are 

 real to us to-day, though one went silent 

 and the other faded out of Sicilian skies 

 two thousand years and more ago, because 

 both are preserved in the verse of Theoc- 

 ritus. The poet was something more than 

 a mere observer of Nature, and the beauti- 

 ful repose of his art more than the native 

 grace and ease of one to whom life meant 

 nothing more strenuous than a dream of 

 a blue sea and fair sky. He had known 

 the din of the crowded street as well as the 

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