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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Theocritus

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Theocritus

By Maurice Francis Egan (1852–1924)

[Born in Philadelphia, Penn., 1852. Died in New York, N. Y., 1924. From Preludes.—Songs and Sonnets. 1885.]

DAPHNIS is mute, and hidden nymphs complain,

And mourning mingles with their fountains’ song;

Shepherds contend no more, as all day long

They watch their sheep on the wide, cyprus-plain;

The master-voice is silent, songs are vain;

Blithe Pan is dead, and tales of ancient wrong

Done by the gods when gods and men were strong,

Chanted to reeded pipes, no prize can gain:

O sweetest singer of the olden days,

In dusty books your idyls rare seem dead;

The gods are gone, but poets never die;

Though men may turn their ears to newer lays,

Sicilian nightingales enrapturèd

Caught all your songs, and nightly thrill the sky.