GEORGE MOORE
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kiss thee, and even in empty kisses there is a sweet delight! In the simple words, even in empty kisses there is a sweet delight, he reaches to the very heart of the sensual instinct. The unfortunate goatherd continues to plead, but for the moment I am at the end of my memories.
Freeman: Theocritus records not the answers of Amaryllis; not a word do we hear her speak. And in the next Idyll Battus and Corydon, two neatherds, meet, and after some random banter their talk turns on the death of Amaryllis.
Moore: Ah, gracious Amaryllis! Thee alone even in death will we ne'er forget. Dear to me as my goats wert thou, and thou art dead! Alas, too cruel a spirit hath my lot in his keeping. That is all we know of Amaryllis, and the scene of this great love grief is described in an anecdote—the plucking out of a thorn that has run into Battus' foot under the ankle. Battus' sighs for Amaryllis were the first, but they were not the last. The world has continued ever since to sigh for Amaryllis. Is it her name that has given her an immortality that has endured for more than two thousand years, and given immortality to a hind like Battus? For we like him when he says: I will sing no more, but dead will I lie where I fall, and here may the wolves devour me. This rough goatherd was a true lover. Why are these hinds and shepherdesses immortal, Mr Freeman? Why are they real? Why are they enough? Because his Idylls tell of happy days and men and women who lead happy lives, following their flocks and their instincts. It would be hard to find an unhappy day in his pages, not even the two fishermen who wake up 1n their broken hut with nothing before them but another toilsome day in search of food, two old men at the end of their lives who will one day be unable to put forth again. What is sadder than this end of old age? Yet Theocritus brings into his story a dream. Tell me, says one old man, the vision of the night; nay, tell all to thy friend. And the fisherman tells of the dream in which he hooked a fish with golden scales, and the great difficulty he had to bring it on shore. You remember?
Freeman: Yes; and the answer to forget the dream and seek the fish of flesh, lest thou die of famine with all thy dreams of gold!
Moore: To that answer, so beautiful and so wise, a modern writer
