silence of the country road, the forms and 

 shows of a royal court as well as the sim- 

 plicity and sincerity of tangled vines and 

 gnarled olives on the hillside. He had seen, 

 with those eyes which overlooked nothing, 

 the pomps and vanities of power, the fret 

 and fever of ambition, the impotence and 

 barrenness of much of that activity in 

 which multitudes of men spend their lives 

 under the delusion that mere stir and bustle 

 mean progress and achievement. Out of 

 Syracuse, with its petty court about a petty 

 tyrant, Theocritus had come back to the 

 sea and the sky and the hardy pastoral life 

 with a joy which touches some of his 

 lines with penetrating tenderness. Better a 

 thousand times for him and for us the 

 long, tranquil 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 gen- 

 uine. The lines which the hand of Theoc- 

 ritus has left on the past are few and 

 marvellously delicate, but they seem to 

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