Ah! cunning Sicilian! well didst thou know where life shed its most delicious dreams. Anacreon at his wine, and Tibullus in the rapture of one of his sweetest love-visions, was a novice in true enjoyment to thee. Hark! to the very sounds which he conjures up! There is nothing startling—nothing exciting.—No! there is enough of excitement already in the climate, in the summer heat, in the very scenes and persons from whose city revels he has just withdrawn. The true secret now is, to summon up only images of luxurious rest; of calm beauty; of refreshing coolness; that the blood, already running riot, may flow in the veins like the nectar of the gods, and send up to the brain images and trains of images of the very poetry of Elysium. Hark to the sounds about you!
Sweet low the herds along the pastured ground;
Sweet is the vocal reed’s melodious sound;
Sweet pipes the jocund herdsman.
But I will give one more extract from him, which seems to combine all the fascinations he loved to paint as existing in the summer woodlands.
He courteous bade us on soft beds recline,
Of lentesch and young branches of the vine;
Poplars and elms above their foliage spread,
Lent a cool shade, and waved the breezy head.
Below, a stream, from the nymphs’ sacred cave,
In free meanders led its murmuring wave;
In the warm sunbeams, verdant shrubs among,
Shrill grashoppers renewed their plaintive song;
At distance far, concealed in shades alone,
The nightingale poured forth her tuneful moan:
The lark, the goldfinch, warbled lays of love,
And sweetly pensive cooed the turtle-dove;
While honey-bees, for ever on the wing,
Hummed round the flowers, and sipped the silver spring.
The rich, ripe season gratified the sense
With summer’s sweets and autumn’s redolence.
Apples and pears lay strewed in heaps around,
And the plum’s loaded branches kissed the ground.
Id. vii.
Well, we must pass over from the Greeks to the Romans, and I have found it so difficult to escape from Theocritus, that we must make short work of it here. Of Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys,—I will say nothing. We all know how they delighted in their country villas and gardens. We all know how Cicero, in his Treatise on Old Age, has declared his fondness for farming; and how, between his pleadings in the Forum, he used to seek the refreshment of a walk in a grove of plane-trees. We know how, during the best ages of the Commonwealth, their generals and dictators were brought from the plough and their country retreats—a fine feature in the Roman character, and one which may, in part, account for their so long retaining the simplicity of their tastes, and that high tone of virtue which generally accompanies a daily intercourse with the spirit of nature. All this we know; but what is still more remarkable is, that Horace and Virgil, two of the most courtly poets that ever existed, yet were both passionately fond of the country, and perpetually declare in their writings that there is nothing in the splendour and fascinations of city life, to compare with the serene felicity of a rural one. Horace is perpetually rejoicing over his Sabine farm; and Virgil has, in his Georgics, described all the rural economy of the age with a gusto that is felt in every line. His details fill us with admiration at the great resemblance of the science of these matters at that time, and at this. With scarcely an exception, in all modes of rural management, in all kinds of farming stock—sheep, cattle, and horses, he would be now pronounced a consummate judge; and his rules for the culture of fields and gardens, would serve for studies here, notwithstanding the difference of the Italian and English climates. But it is only in that celebrated passage beginning—
O fortunatos nimiùm, sua si bona nôrint,
Agricolas!
in his second Georgic, so often quoted, that he seems to get into a rapture when contemplating the charms of a country life. We may take this as a sufficient example, and as very delightful in itself.
Oh happy, if he knew his happy state,
The swain who free from business and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature’s hand,
And just returns of cultivated land.
No palace with a lofty gate he wants,
To admit the tide of early visitants,
With eager eyes, devouring as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten from high pedestals,
No Persian arras hides his homely walls
With antic vests, which, through their shadowy fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.
He boasts no wool where native white is dyed
With purple poison of Assyrian pride.
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty the rich owner bless,
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvexed with quarrels, undisturbed by noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys.
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