Idyl ii. 163 et seq.
Or this of a falling star:
κατήριπε δ' ἐς μέλαν ὕδωρ
ἀθρόος, ὡς ὅκα πυρσὸς ἀπ' οὐρανῶ ἤριπεν ἀστήρ
ἀθρόος ἐν πόντῳ, ναύταις δέ τις εἶπεν ἑταίροις·
κουφότερ', ὦ παῖδες, ποιεῖσθ' ὅπλα· πλευστικὸς οὖρος.[148]
Idyl xiii. 49-52.
Or the sea-weeds on a rocky shore (vii. 58), or the summer bee (iii. 15), or the country party at harvest time (vii. 129 to the end). In all of these a peculiar simplicity will be noticed, a self-restraint and scrupulosity of definite delineation. To Theocritus the shadowy and iridescent fancies of modern poetry would have been unintelligible. The creations of a Keats or Shelley would have appeared to be monstrous births, like the Centaurs of Ixion, begotten by lawless imaginations upon cloud and mist. When the Greek poet wished to express the charm of summer waves he spoke of Galatea, more fickle and light than thistle-down, a maiden careless of her lover and as cruel as the sea. The same waves suggested to Shakespeare these lines, from Midsummer-Night's Dream:
Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music;
and to Weber the ethereal "mermaid's song" in Oberon. No one acquainted with Shakespeare and Weber can deny that both have expressed with marvellous subtlety the magic of the sea in its enchanting calm, whereas the Greek poet works only by indirect suggestion, and presents us with a human portrait more than a phantom of the glamour of the deep. What we have lost in definite projection we have gained in truth, variety, and freedom. The language of our art appeals immediately to the emotions, disclosing the spiritual reality of things, and caring less for their form than for the feelings they excite in us. Greek art remains upon the surface, and translates into marble the humanized aspects of the external world. The one is forever seeking to set free, the other to imprison, thought. The Greek tells with exquisite precision what he has observed, investing it perhaps with his own emotion. He says, for instance:
αἴθε γενοίμαν
ἁ βομβεῦσα μέλισσα, καὶ ἐς τεὸν ἄντρον ἱκοίμαν,
τὸν κισσὸν διαδὺς καὶ τὰν πτέριν, ᾇ τὺ πικάσδῃ.[149]
The modern poet, to use Shelley's words,