pastoral

It will now be his valued privilege to represent an absent rector in a country living; remote from cities, secluded in pastoral solitude, among simple breeders of sheep.

She turned white in the face, and drew her breath through her teeth in a savage sort of way; - but she offered no extenuation or defence; and with a kind of shameless calmness - shocking indeed to witness in one so young - as good as told me that my remonstrance was unavailing, and my pastoral advice quite thrown away upon her - nay, that my very presence was displeasing while I spoke such things.

Then does she twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes of the dance.

It was used, we are told, by a pastoral people of Persian descent; of whom eight thousand accompanied the army of Xerxes.

Following our example, many more of Leandra's lovers have come to these rude mountains and adopted our mode of life, and they are so numerous that one would fancy the place had been turned into the pastoral Arcadia, so full is it of shepherds and sheep-folds; nor is there a spot in it where the name of the fair Leandra is not heard.

But besides attending to the pastoral duties there, he learned the language of the red men, and often went into the woods to preach to them.

*Preface to Boethius' Pastoral Care, translated into English by Alfred.

The hero of this tale stared stupidly at the pastoral picture as if he had never seen such a thing in all his life; then he put his hand to his head, passed it through his hair and, withdrawing it, attentively considered the palm--a singular thing to do.

As I once more shouldered my pack and went my way, the character of the country side began to change, and, from a semi- pastoral heathiness and furziness, took on a wildness of aspect, which if indeed melodramatic was melodrama carried to the point of genius.

But it was not for such passionless calm that he preferred the scenes of [103] pastoral life; and the meditative poet, sheltering himself from the agitations of the outward world, is in reality only clearing the scene for the exhibition of great emotions, and what he values most is the almost elementary expression of elementary feelings.

There are songs of delight in Nature; a multitude of love poems of all moods; many pastorals, in which, generally, the pastoral conventions sit lightly on the genuine poetical feeling; occasional patriotic outbursts; and some reflective and religious poems.

Some portions of it along the rivers may partially be subdued by agriculture, others may form vast pastoral tracts, like those of the East; but it is to be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of Arabia; and, like them, be subject to the depredations of the marauder.