H ipoet of tbe ipoot 



They do but lie, partner, the folk who say 

 That when the summer days are long the nights 

 Are short ; for I have dreamed and dreamed, 

 And yet no streak of morn is in the sky. 

 How is 't ? The nights, surely they must be long. 



Then they lie there and chat, and this 

 one tells his dream — a dream of gold, which 

 comes in the form of a fish, only to leave 

 him more forlorn than ever. 



This idyl is an extreme example of those 

 hopeless poems which in some way exhale 

 comfort. The whole list of pathetic word- 

 pictures may be searched through in vain 

 for another so brimming with reality and 

 yet so isolated in its almost weird romance. 

 Shakspere at his best never surpassed its 

 naked dramatic skeleton, nor could he 

 have clothed its bones with the flesh of a 

 sincerer humanity. Some of the doctors 

 say that Theocritus did not write it. I 

 think that he lived it. In the art of set- 

 ting up an isolated figure, self-sufficient 

 and unconscious of any lack, an individual 

 dramatic creation, Theocritus stands 

 master. He was not in the least a 

 playwright, but he had the direct and 

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