Well, our English poet felt with the Greek idylists, and in the poem called “An Invocation” he beautifully expresses this sympathy.  All of us, he says, should like to see and hear something of the ancient past if it were possible.  We should like, some of us, to call back the vanished gods and goddesses of the beautiful Greek world, or to talk to the great souls of that world who had the experience of life as men—­to Socrates, for example, to Plato, to Phidias the sculptor, to Pericles the statesman.  But, as a poet, my wish would not be for the return of the old gods nor of the old heroes so much as for the return to us of some common men who lived in the Greek world.  It is Comatas, he says, that he would most like to see, and to see in some English park—­in the neighbourhood of Cambridge University, or of Eton College.  And thus he addresses the spirit of Comatas: 

  O dear divine Comatas, I would that thou and I
  Beneath this broken sunlight this leisure day might lie;
  Where trees from distant forests, whose names were strange to thee,
  Should bend their amorous branches within thy reach to be,
  And flowers thine Hellas knew not, which art hath made more fair,
  Should shed their shining petals upon thy fragrant hair.

  Then thou shouldst calmly listen with ever-changing looks
  To songs of younger minstrels and plots of modern books,
  And wonder at the daring of poets later born,
  Whose thoughts are unto thy thoughts as noontide is to morn;
  And little shouldst them grudge them their greater strength of soul,
  Thy partners in the torch-race, though nearer to the goal.

* * * * *

  Or in thy cedarn prison thou waitest for the bee: 
  Ah, leave that simple honey and take thy food from me. 
  My sun is stooping westward.  Entranced dreamer, haste;
  There’s fruitage in my garden that I would have thee taste. 
  Now lift the lid a moment; now, Dorian shepherd, speak;
  Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek.

A few phrases of these beautiful stanzas need explanation.  “Broken sunlight” refers, of course, to the imperfect shade thrown by the trees under which the poet is lying.  The shadow is broken by the light passing through leaves, or conversely, the light is broken by the interposition of the leaves.  The reference to trees from distant forests no doubt intimates that the poet is in some botanical garden, a private park, in which foreign trees are carefully cultivated.  The “torch race” is a simile for the pursuit of knowledge and truth.  Greek thinkers compare the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, to the passing of a lighted torch from hand to hand, as in the case of messengers carrying signals or athletes running a mighty race.  As a runner runs until he is tired, or until he reaches the next station, and then passes the torch which he has been carrying to another runner