Idyl - photo wallpapers; Photowallpapers.org An idyll or idyl is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus's short pastoral poems, the Idylls. Later imitators included the Roman poets Virgil and Catullus, and the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Idyll (Gr. eidyllion (little picture), is also the name of a kind of painting usually representing a pastor and his animals in a rural setting. They are depicted in a natural way, the three components, man, animal and the environment being in a harmonious unity, rendering the picture not to be a landscape, or a genre, or just an image of an animal. Nature in this combination is presented in a non-sophisticated, realistic fashion. The subjects of such pictures are usually simple people living in uncivilised conditions, featuring naivity in their thinking and yet leading a happy and cheerful life. The approach to the presentation is not humorous, but emotional, sometimes sentimental.