With many a holm-oak’s gloom reposeth nigh
In hallowed shadow. Then at set of sun
Once more supply clear streams and drive afield
Thy flock, when eventide cools all the air,
And the moon dewy-moist repairs the lawns
With freshness, while the shores with halcyon notes
Resound, the copses with the goldfinch song.”
It has generally been held that one of the most prominent notes of Virgil’s genius was his sympathy with Nature. To this the late Professor Conington, whose opinion on whatever concerned Virgil deserves all respect, used to demur, and to maintain rather that his chief characteristic lay in an elaborate and refined culture, manifesting itself in the most consummate delicacy and grace. But though Virgil was before all things the poet of learned culture and artistic beauty, this did not hinder, rather prompted him, to turn on Nature a sympathetic and loving eye. The perception of a sympathy between the feelings and vicissitudes of man and the world that surrounds him appears nowhere so strongly as in his latest poem, the Æneid. It may have been that as his subject led him much into battles and adventures, alien to his taste, he seized all the more eagerly every opportunity of reverting to that Nature which had been his earliest delight.
Whatever be the cause, the pictures of Nature, whether in description or in simile, are more frequent, more intimate, more tender, than in either of his earlier productions. It has been noticed, for instance, that at the beginning of the sixth book, as the Sibyl draws nigh, the earth rumbles, the mountains quake, as if sharing the human dread at her approach; and that throughout the fourth book there is maintained a fine sympathy between the aspects of the outer world and the passions which agitate the human actors.
It is thus he sets off the tumult in the soul of the lovelorn and wronged queen in contrast with the calm and silence of night:—