United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With this complexion and these qualifications, no wonder that our hero attracted the notice and affections of the young Delias in town, whose hearts had just begun to flutter for they knew not what.
Even their Delias and their Amandas are often the shadows of some real object; for as Shakspeare's experience told him, "Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs." Their imagination is perpetually colouring those pictures of domestic happiness on which they delight to dwell.
Thus, before the Middle Ages, there existed as a rule only a holy, but indifferent and utterly unlyrical, love for the women, the equals of their husbands, wooed usually of the family and solemnly given in marriage without much consultation of their wishes; and a highly passionate and singing, but completely profligate and debasing, desire for mercenary though cultivated creatures like the Delias and Cynthlas of Tibullus and Propertius, or highborn women, descended, like Catullus' Lesbia, in brazen dishonour to their level, women towards whom there could not possibly exist on the part of their lovers any sense of equality, much less of inferiority.
Percy said, that, in his opinion, a life purely pastoral must, if it could be realized, prove as insufferably tiresome in reality, as it usually is found to be in fiction. He hated Delias and shepherdesses, and declared that he should soon grow tired of any companion with whom he had no other occupation in common but "tending a few sheep."
Word Of The Day