He develops all the ideas which he handles. All his phrases become periods. Instead of compressing, he expands. To bear this ample thought and its accompanying train, he requires a long stanza, ever renewed, long alternate verses, reiterated rhymes, whose uniformity and fullness recall the majestic sounds which undulate eternally through the woods and the fields. To unfold these epic faculties, and to display them in the sublime region where his soul is naturally borne, he requires an ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, with personages who could hardly exist, and in a world which could never be. He made many miscellaneous attempts in sonnets, elegies, pastorals, hymns of love, little sparkling word-pictures;[355] they were but essays, incapable for the most part of supporting his genius. Yet already his magnificent imagination appeared in them; gods, men, landscapes, the world which he sets in motion is a thousand miles from that in which we live. His "Shepherd's Calendar"[356] is a thought-inspiring and tender pastoral, full of delicate loves, noble sorrows, lofty ideas, where no voice is heard but of thinkers and poets. His "Visions of Petrarch and Du Bellay" are admirable dreams, in which palaces, temples of gold, splendid landscapes, sparkling rivers, marvellous birds, appear in close succession as in an Oriental fairy-tale. If he sings a "Prothalamion," he sees two beautiful swans, white as snow, who come softly swimming down amidst the songs of nymphs and vermeil roses, while the transparent water kisses their silken feathers, and murmurs with joy: "There, in a meadow, by the river's side, A flocke of Nymphes I chaunced to espy, All lovely daughters of the Flood thereby, With goodly greenish locks, all loose untyde, As each had bene a bryde; And each one had a little wicker basket, Made of fine twigs, entrayled curiously, In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket, And with fine fingers cropt full feateously The tender stalkes on hye. Of every sort, which in that meadow grew, They gathered some; the violet, pallid blew, The little dazie, that at evening closes, The virgin lillie, and the primrose trew, With store of vermeil roses, To deck their bridegroomes posies Against the brydale-day, which was not long: Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song. "With that I saw two Swannes of goodly hewe Come softly swimming downe along the lee; Two fairer birds I yet did never see; The snow, which doth the top of Pindus strew, Did never whiter shew... So purely white they were, That even the gentle stream, the which them bare, Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare To wet their silken feathers, least they might Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre, And marre their beauties bright, That shone as heavens light, Against their brydale day, which was not long: Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song!"[357]