Such reflections are trite and commonplace. Yet who can resist the force of their truth and pathos?
#ouch hamin ton Erôta monois etech', hôs edokeumes, Nikia, hôitini touto theôn poka teknon egento; ouch hamin ta kala pratois kala phainetai êmes, hoi thnatoi pelomestha, to d' aurion ouk esorômes#[144]--
said Theocritus, looking back into the far past, and remembering that the gifts of love and beauty have belonged to men and gods from everlasting. With what redoubled force may we, after the lapse of twenty centuries, echo these words, when we tread the ground he knew and read the songs he sang! His hills stir our vague and yearning admiration, his sea laughs its old laugh of waywardness and glee, his flowers bloom yearly, and fade in the spring, his pine and olive branches overshadow us; we listen to the bleating of his goats, and taste the sweetness of the spring from which he drank; the milk and honey are as fresh upon our lips, the wine in winter by the wood fire, when the winds are loud is just as fragrant; youth is still youth, nor have the dark-eyed maidens lost their charm. Truly #ouch hamin ta kala pratois kala phainetai êmes#. In this consists the power of Theocritean poetry. It strikes a note which echoes through our hearts by reason of its genuine simplicity and pathos. The thoughts which natural beauty stirs in our minds find their embodiment in his sweet, strong verse; and though since his time the world has grown old, though the gods of Greece have rent their veils and fled with shrieks from their sanctuaries, though in spite of ourselves we turn our faces skyward from the earth, though emaciated saints and martyrs have supplanted Adonis and the Graces, though the cold, damp shades of Calvinism have chilled our marrow and our blood, yet there remain deep down within our souls some primal sympathies with nature, some instincts of the faun or satyr or sylvan, which education has not quite eradicated. "The hand which hath long time held a violet doth not soon forego her perfume, nor the cup from which sweet wine had flowed his fragrance."