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Updated: June 13, 2025
Who can read his much-translated masterpiece without unpleasant twinges? Dead as a doornail! So far as I can recollect, there is an infinity of kissing in "Daphnis." It was an age of sentimentality, and the Greek pastoral ideal, transfused into a Swiss environment of 1810, could not but end in slobber and Gefuehlsduselei.
See here, how they bloom, my slender cypress-trees. The Maiden. Graze on, my goats, I go to learn the herdsman's labours. Daphnis. Feed fair, my bulls, while I show my woodlands to my lady! The Maiden. What dost thou, little satyr; why dost thou touch my breast? Daphnis. The Maiden. By Pan, I swoon; away, take back thy hand. Daphnis. Courage, dear girl, why fearest thou me, thou art over fearful!
With much tact he abstained from saying anything to her about the extraordinary experience he had just gone through, feeling very justly that, though she seemed more or less reconciled to the ministry of angels, Daphnis was frankly a pagan spirit, and would, as such, be open to grave suspicion from the standpoint of his aunt's orthodoxy. But it didn't matter much, after all.
Near by were some stray military volumes, treatises on tactics and fortification, that had belonged to a dashing young officer in the Dillon Regiment, close to some "Epitres Amoureux," a translation of "Daphnis and Chloe," and the like all now sunk together into the same dusty neglect.
Strange indeed is it to encounter Daphnis and Chloe in the Forest of Bondy! The dark Saint Martin Canal, into which the footpad pushes the passer-by with his elbow as he snatches his victim's watch, traverses the Tender and empties itself into the Lignon. Poulmann begs a ribbon bow; one is tempted to present a shepherdess's crook to Papavoine.
Sweet was his flute's first triumph over Menaleas: "Then was the boy glad, and leaped high, and clapped his hands over his victory, as a young fawn leaps about his mother"; but sweeter was the unwon victory when he strove with Damoetas: "Then Damoetas kissed Daphnis, as he ended his song, and he gave Daphnis a pipe, and Daphnis gave him a beautiful flute.
Instinctively he put out his hand to pull the coverings closer over him, and found that they seemed to have slipped down somehow, leaving his chest exposed. Then, warm again, he dozed off once more and dreamt that he was at the pool of Daphnis with Lubin. How cool and blue the water looked, and how lovely the plunge would be!
They are caught in bird-traps. They don the lion-skin of Heracles. They flutter about baskets laden with roses; round rosy Loves, like the cupids of Boucher. They are not akin to 'the grievous Love, the mighty wrestler who threw Daphnis a fall, in the first idyl of Theocritus.
Daphnis, the white-limbed Daphnis, that pipes on his fair flute the pastoral strains offered to Pan these gifts, his pierced reed-pipes, his crook, a javelin keen, a fawn-skin, and the scrip wherein he was wont, on a time, to carry the apples of Love. III For a Picture.
Thyrsis of Etna am I, and this is the voice of Thyrsis. Where, ah! where were ye when Daphnis was languishing; ye Nymphs, where were ye? By Peneus's beautiful dells, or by dells of Pindus? for surely ye dwelt not by the great stream of the river Anapus, nor on the watch-tower of Etna, nor by the sacred water of Acis. Begin, ye Muses dear, begin the pastoral song!
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