ABSTRACT
Natural resonance often figures a community within nature, or uniting man and nature; the word concord still has meanings that carry this figurative extension of the acoustic. The ability to excite the landscape to resonant or echoic response is a traditional mark of poetic skill: since to respond or echo is the best nature can do toward perpetuating human utterance, such response is taken as an act of natural homage. The most accomplished of Virgil’s pastoral singers, the shepherd Tityrus, is discovered at the opening of the Eclogues, ‘teaching the woods to resound with the name of “Amaryllis.”’ In this respect, as in many others, ColinClout is the heir of ‘Romish Tityrus’: in The Shepheardes Calender, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, and The Faerie Queene, Colin’s potent song elicits the harmonious response of the landscape. Sometimes the pastoralist’s power over the landscape is rather greater than his power over his beloved, and so he may find himself seeking out the echoic landscape as an appropriate spot for amatory lament, as Colin does in August. In a sense, Echo sings descant to all erotic song, be it celebratory or doleful.
