In a wide, heavily wooded country, the sojourning-place of that
happiness sung by the poets, some peasants have discovered a tomb hidden
by a thicket of trees, and bearing this brief inscription: "Et in
Arcadia ego" (I too lived in Arcadia). These words, issuing from the
tomb, sadden their faces, and the smiles die upon their lips. A young
girl, carelessly leaning upon the shoulder of her lover, seems to
listen, mute and pensive, to this salutation from the dead. The thought
of death has also plunged into reverie a youth who leans over the tomb
with bowed head, while the oldest shepherd points out the inscription he
has just discovered. The landscape that completes this quiet picture
shows reddened leaves upon arid rocks; hillocks that melt in the vague
horizon, and in the distance, something ill-defined that resembles the
sea. The sublime in this painting is that which we cannot see; it is the
thought that hovers over it, the unexpected emotion that fills the soul
of the spectator, transported suddenly beyond the tomb into the
infinite unknown.
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