Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/254

 (A portion of the Tenth and the whole of the Thirteenth Idyls of Theocritus are given in the following translations. The text of "Hylas" is somewhat in dispute, and as the translator has examined various editions, his versions will be found to differ, in one or two places, from the common reading. He has also, with good authority, divided the alternate songs of "The Reapers" into the couplets, which so exactly balance each other, and which are approved by critical and poetical instinct. The English hexameter has been selected as the only measure adapted to a literal and a lineal rendering of the peculiar idyllic verse. These specimens of the Sicilian-Doric poetry, including a pastoral, and a semi-epic theme, are from a version of the works of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, which was begun many years ago, but has never been completed.)