Faint now as his voice are the voices of the shepherds who are gone,
youth and maiden and children; dimly I see them, vaguely I hear them; at
last there remains only "the hoar sea's infinite spray." And will you
say it was in truth all a dream? Were the poor fisherman in their toil
alone real, and the rest airy nothings to whom Sicily gave a local
habitation and a name? It was Virgil's dream and Spenser's; and some
secret there was--something still in our breasts--that made it immortal,
so that to name the Sicilian Muses is to stir an infinite, longing
tenderness in every young and noble heart that the gods have softened
with sweet thoughts.
And here I shut in my pages the one laurel leaf that Taormina bore. She,
too, in her centuries has had her poet. Perhaps none who will see these
words ever gave a thought to the name and fame of Cornelius Severus. Few
of his works remain, and little is known of his life. He is said to have
been the friend of Pollio, and to have been present in the Sicilian war
between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. He wrote the first book of an epic
poem on that subject, so excellent that it has been thought that, had
the entire work been continued at the same level, he would have held the
second place among the Latin epic poets.
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