heardst them tell their dreams.

Or again thou wouldst wander with dusty feet through the ways that the
dust makes silent, while the breath of the kine, as they were driven
forth with the morning, came fresh to thee, and the trailing dewy branch
of honeysuckle struck sudden on thy cheek. Thou wouldst see the Dawn
awake in rose and saffron across the waters, and Etna, grey and pale
against the sky, and the setting crescent would dip strangely in the
glow, on her way to the sea. Then, methinks, thou wouldst murmur, like
thine own Simaetha, the love-lorn witch, 'Farewell, Selene, bright and
fair; farewell, ye other stars, that follow the wheels of the quiet
Night.' Nay, surely it was in such an hour that thou didst behold the
girl as she burned the laurel leaves and the barley grain, and melted
the waxen image, and called on Selene to bring her lover home. Even so,
even now, in the islands of Greece, the setting Moon may listen to the
prayers of maidens. 'Bright golden Moon, that now art near the waters,
go thou and salute my lover, he that stole my love, and that kissed me,
saying "Never will I leave thee." And lo, he hath left me as men leave a
field reaped and gleaned, like a church where none cometh to pray, like
a city desolate.'

So the girls still sing in Greece, for though the Temples have fallen,
and the wandering shepherds sleep beneath the broken columns of the
god's house in Selinus, yet these ancient fires burn still to the old
divinities in the shrines of the hearths of the peasants. It is none of
the new creeds that cry, in the dirge of the Sicilian shepherds of
our time, 'Ah, light of mine eyes, what gift shall I send thee, what
offering to the other world? The apple fadeth, the quince decayeth,
and one by one they perish, the petals of the rose. I will send thee my
tears shed on a napkin, and what though it burneth in the flame, if my
tears reach thee at the last.'

Yes, little is altered, Theocritus, on these shores beneath the sun,
where thou didst wear a tawny skin stripped from the roughest of
he-goats, and about thy breast an old cloak buckled with a plaited
belt. Thou wert happier there, in Sicily, methinks, and among vines
and shadowy lime-trees of Cos, than in the dust, and heat, and noise of
Alexandria. What love of fame, what lust of gold tempted thee away from
the red cliffs, and grey olives, and wells of black water wreathed with
maidenhair?

The music of the rustic flute
Kept not for