"
"'His visionary flocks,'" he repeated, wondering if the beautiful
phrase had floated accidentally into his mind, hoping that it was
his own, and then abandoning hope, for he had nearly succeeded in
tracing the author of the phrase; but there was a vision in it more
intense than Tennyson's. "Visionary flocks!" For while the shepherds
watched Theocritus dreamed the immortal sheep and goats which tempt
us for an instant to become shepherds; but Owen knew that the real
flocks would seem unreal to him who knew the visionary ones, so he
turned away from the coasts without a desire in his heart to trouble
the shepherds in the valley with an offer of his services, and
walked up and down the deck thinking how he might obtain a
translation of the idyls.
"Sicily, Sicily!"
It was unendurable that his skipper should come at such a moment to
ask him if he would like to land at Palermo; for why should he land
in Sicily unless to meet the goatherd who in order to beguile
Thyrsis to sing the song of Daphnis told him that "his song was
sweeter than the music of yonder water that is poured from the high
face of the rock"? It was in Sicily that rugged Polyphemus, peering
over some cliffs, sought to discern Galatea in the foam; but before
Owen had time to recall the myth an indenture in the coast line,
revealing a field, reminded him how Proserpine, while gathering
flowers on the plains of Enna with her maidens, had been raped into
the shadows by the dark god.
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