Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series

Chapter XII: Part 12

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Poliziano's refrain is always: 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. It is spring-time now and youth. Winter and old age are coming!' A _Maggio_, or May-day song, describing the games, dances, and jousting matches of the Florentine lads upon the morning of the first of May, expresses this facile philosophy of life with a quaintness that recalls Herrick. It will be noticed that the Maggio is built, so far as rhymes go, on the same system as Poliziano's Ballata. It has considerable historical interest, for the opening couplet is said to be Guido Cavalcanti's, while the whole poem is claimed by Roscoe for Lorenzo de' Medici, and by Carducci with better reason for Poliziano.

Welcome in the May
And the woodland garland gay!

Welcome in the jocund spring
Which bids all men lovers be!
Maidens, up with carolling,
With your sweethearts stout and free,
With roses and with blossoms ye
Who deck yourselves this first of May!

Up, and forth into the pure
Meadows, mid the trees and flowers!
Every beauty is secure
With so many bachelors:
Beasts and birds amid the bowers
Burn with love this first of May.

Maidens, who are young and fair,
Be not harsh, I counsel you;
For your youth cannot repair
Her prime of spring, as meadows do:
None be proud, but all be true
To men who love, this first of May.

Dance and carol every one
Of our band so bright and gay!
See your sweethearts how they run
Through the jousts for you to-day!
She who saith her lover nay,
Will deflower the sweets of May,

Lads in love take sword and shield
To make pretty girls their prize:
Yield ye, merry maidens, yield
To your lovers' vows and sighs:
Give his heart back ere it dies:
Wage not war this first of May.

He who steals another's heart,
Let him give his own heart too:
Who's the robber? 'Tis the smart
Little cherub Cupid, who
Homage comes to pay with you,
Damsels, to the first of May.

Love comes smiling; round his head
Lilies white and roses meet:
'Tis for you his flight is sped.
Fair one, haste our king to greet:
Who will fling him blossoms sweet
Soonest on this first of May?

Welcome, stranger! welcome, king!
Love, what hast thou to command?
That each girl with wreaths should ring
Her lover's hair with loving hand,
That girls small and great should band
In Love's ranks this first of May.

The _Canto Carnascialesco_, for the final development if not for the invention of which all credit must be given to Lorenzo de' Medici, does not greatly differ from the Maggio in structure. It admitted, however, of great varieties, and was generally more complex in its interweaving of rhymes. Yet the essential principle of an exordium which should also serve for a refrain, was rarely, if ever, departed from. Two specimens of the Carnival Song will serve to bring into close contrast two very different aspects of Florentine history. The earlier was composed by Lorenzo de' Medici at the height of his power and in the summer of Italian independence. It was sung by masquers attired in classical costume, to represent Bacchus and his crew.

Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

This is Bacchus and the bright
Ariadne, lovers true!
They, in flying time's despite,
Each with each find pleasure new;
These their Nymphs, and all their crew
Keep perpetual holiday.--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

These blithe Satyrs, wanton-eyed,
Of the Nymphs are paramours:
Through the caves and forests wide
They have snared them mid the flowers;
Warmed with Bacchus, in his bowers,
Now they dance and leap alway.--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

These fair Nymphs, they are not loth
To entice their lovers' wiles.
None but thankless folk and rough
Can resist when Love beguiles.
Now enlaced, with wreathèd smiles,
All together dance and play.--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

See this load behind them plodding
On the ass! Silenus he,
Old and drunken, merry, nodding,
Full of years and jollity;
Though he goes so swayingly,
Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Midas treads a wearier measure:
All he touches turns to gold:
If there be no taste of pleasure,
What's the use of wealth untold?
What's the joy his fingers hold,
When he's forced to thirst for aye?--
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Listen well to what we're saying;
Of to-morrow have no care!
Young and old together playing,
Boys and girls, be blithe as air!
Every sorry thought forswear!
Keep perpetual holiday.---
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Ladies and gay lovers young!
Long live Bacchus, live Desire!
Dance and play; let songs be sung;
Let sweet love your bosoms fire;
In the future come what may!---
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day!
Nought ye know about to-morrow.

Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.

The next, composed by Antonio Alamanni, after Lorenzo's death and the ominous passage of Charles VIII., was sung by masquers habited as skeletons. The car they rode on, was a Car of Death designed by Piero di Cosimo, and their music was purposely gloomy. If in the jovial days of the Medici the streets of Florence had rung to the thoughtless refrain, 'Nought ye know about to-morrow,' they now re-echoed with a cry of 'Penitence;' for times had strangely altered, and the heedless past had brought forth a doleful present. The last stanza of Alamanni's chorus is a somewhat clumsy attempt to adapt the too real moral of his subject to the customary mood of the Carnival.

Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye;
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but penitence!

E'en as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are:
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men, where
Nought avails to take great care,
After sins, of penitence.

We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-songs through the town;
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down:--
Now we cry, the world around,
Penitence! oh, Penitence!

Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
Time steals all things as he rides:
Honours, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and nought abides;
Till the tomb our carcase hides,
And compels this penitence.

This sharp scythe you see us bear,
Brings the world at length to woe:
But from life to life we fare;
And that life is joy or woe:
All heaven's bliss on him doth flow
Who on earth does penitence.

Living here, we all must die;
Dying, every soul shall live:
For the King of kings on high
This fixed ordinance doth give:
Lo, you all are fugitive!
Penitence! Cry Penitence!

Torment great and grievous dole
Hath the thankless heart mid you;
But the man of piteous soul
Finds much honour in our crew:
Love for loving is the due
That prevents this penitence.

Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but Penitence!

One song for dancing, composed less upon the type of the Ballata than on that of the Carnival Song, may here be introduced, not only in illustration of the varied forms assumed by this style of poetry, but also because it is highly characteristic of Tuscan town-life. This poem in the vulgar style has been ascribed to Lorenzo de' Medici, but probably without due reason. It describes the manners and customs of female street gossips.

Since you beg with such a grace,
How can I refuse a song,
Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
On the follies of the place?

Courteously on you I call;
Listen well to what I sing:
For my roundelay to all
May perchance instruction bring,
And of life good lessoning.--
When in company you meet,
Or sit spinning, all the street
Clamours like a market-place.

Thirty of you there may be;
Twenty-nine are sure to buzz,
And the single silent she
Racks her brains about her coz:--
Mrs. Buzz and Mrs. Huzz,
Mind your work, my ditty saith;
Do not gossip till your breath
Fails and leaves you black of face!

Governments go out and in:--
You the truth must needs discover.
Is a girl about to win
A brave husband in her lover?--
Straight you set to talk him over:
'Is he wealthy?' 'Does his coat
Fit?' 'And has he got a vote?'
'Who's his father?' 'What's his race?'

Out of window one head pokes;
Twenty others do the same:--
Chatter, clatter!--creaks and croaks
All the year the same old game!--
'See my spinning!' cries one dame,
'Five long ells of cloth, I trow!'
Cries another, 'Mine must go,
Drat it, to the bleaching base!'

'Devil take the fowl!' says one:
'Mine are all bewitched, I guess;
Cocks and hens with vermin run,
Mangy, filthy, featherless.'
Says another: 'I confess
Every hair I drop, I keep--
Plague upon it, in a heap
Falling off to my disgrace!'

If you see a fellow walk
Up or down the street and back,
How you nod and wink and talk,
Hurry-skurry, cluck and clack!--
'What, I wonder, does he lack
Here about?'--'There's something wrong!'
Till the poor man's made a song
For the female populace.

It were well you gave no thought
To such idle company;
Shun these gossips, care for nought
But the business that you ply.
You who chatter, you who cry,
Heed my words; be wise, I pray:
Fewer, shorter stories say:
Bide at home, and mind your place.

Since you beg with such a grace,
How can I refuse a song,
Wholesome, honest, void of wrong,
On the follies of the place?

The _Madrigale_, intended to be sung in parts, was another species of popular poetry cultivated by the greatest of Italian writers. Without seeking examples from such men as Petrarch, Michelangelo, or Tasso, who used it as a purely literary form, I will content myself with a few Madrigals by anonymous composers, more truly popular in style, and more immediately intended for music.[32] The similarity both of manner and matter, between these little poems and the Ballate, is obvious. There is the same affectation of rusticity in both.

_Cogliendo per un prato._

Plucking white lilies in a field I saw
Fair women, laden with young Love's delight:
Some sang, some danced; but all were fresh and bright.
Then by the margin of a fount they leaned,
And of those flowers made garlands for their hair--
Wreaths for their golden tresses quaint and rare.
Forth from the field I passed, and gazed upon
Their loveliness, and lost my heart to one.

_Togliendo l' una all' altra._

One from the other borrowing leaves and flowers,
I saw fair maidens 'neath the summer trees,
Weaving bright garlands with low love-ditties.
Mid that sweet sisterhood the loveliest
Turned her soft eyes to me, and whispered, 'Take!'
Love-lost I stood, and not a word I spake.
My heart she read, and her fair garland gave:
Therefore I am her servant to the grave.

_Appress' un fiume chiaro_.

Hard by a crystal stream
Girls and maids were dancing round
A lilac with fair blossoms crowned.
Mid these I spied out one
So tender-sweet, so love-laden,
She stole my heart with singing then:
Love in her face so lovely-kind
And eyes and hands my soul did bind.

_Di riva in riva_.

From lawn to lea Love led me down the valley,
Seeking my hawk, where 'neath a pleasant hill
I spied fair maidens bathing in a rill.
Lina was there all loveliness excelling;
The pleasure of her beauty made me sad,
And yet at sight of her my soul was glad.
Downward I cast mine eyes with modest seeming,
And all a tremble from the fountain fled:
For each was naked as her maidenhead.
Thence singing fared I through a flowery plain,
Where bye and bye I found my hawk again!

_Nel chiaro fiume_.

Down a fair streamlet crystal-clear and pleasant
I went a fishing all alone one day,
And spied three maidens bathing there at play.
Of love they told each other honeyed stories,
While with white hands they smote the stream, to wet
Their sunbright hair in the pure rivulet.
Gazing I crouched among thick flowering leafage,
Till one who spied a rustling branch on high,
Turned to her comrades with a sudden cry,
And 'Go! Nay, prithee go!' she called to me:
'To stay were surely but scant courtesy.'

_Quel sole che nutrica._

The sun which makes a lily bloom,
Leans down at times on her to gaze--
Fairer, he deems, than his fair rays:
Then, having looked a little while,
He turns and tells the saints in bliss
How marvellous her beauty is.
Thus up in heaven with flute and string
Thy loveliness the angels sing.

_Di novo è giunt'._

Lo: here hath come an errant knight
On a barbed charger clothed in mail:
His archers scatter iron hail.
At brow and breast his mace he aims;
Who therefore hath not arms of proof,
Let him live locked by door and roof;
Until Dame Summer on a day
That grisly knight return to slay.

Poliziano's treatment of the octave stanza for Rispetti was comparatively popular. But in his poem of 'La Giostra,' written to commemorate the victory of Giuliano de' Medici in a tournament and to celebrate his mistress, he gave a new and richer form to the metre which Boccaccio had already used for epic verse. The slight and uninteresting framework of this poem, which opened a new sphere for Italian literature, and prepared the way for Ariosto's golden cantos, might be compared to one of those wire baskets which children steep in alum water, and incrust with crystals, sparkling, artificial, beautiful with colours not their own. The mind of Poliziano held, as it were, in solution all the images and thoughts of antiquity, all the riches of his native literature. In that vast reservoir of poems and mythologies and phrases, so patiently accumulated, so tenaciously preserved, so thoroughly assimilated, he plunged the trivial subject he had chosen, and triumphantly presented to the world the _spolia opima_ of scholarship and taste. What mattered it that the theme was slight? The art was perfect, the result splendid. One canto of 125 stanzas describes the youth of Giuliano, who sought to pass his life among the woods, a hunter dead to love, but who was doomed to be ensnared by Cupid. The chase, the beauty of Simonetta, the palace of Venus, these are the three subjects of a book as long as the first Iliad. The second canto begins with dreams and prophecies of glory to be won by Giuliano in the tournament. But it stops abruptly. The tragic catastrophe of the Pazzi Conjuration cut short Poliziano's panegyric by the murder of his hero. Meanwhile the poet had achieved his purpose. His torso presented to Italy a model of style, a piece of written art adequate to the great painting of the Renaissance period, a double star of poetry which blent the splendours of the ancient and the modern world. To render into worthy English the harmonies of Poliziano is a difficult task. Yet this must be attempted if an English reader is to gain any notion of the scope and substance of the Italian poet's art. In the first part of the poem we are placed, as it were, at the mid point between the 'Hippolytus' of Euripides and Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis.' The cold hunter Giuliano is to see Simonetta, and seeing, is to love her. This is how he first discovers the triumphant beauty:[33]

White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathèd folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride:

The wild wood smiled; the thicket where he found her,
To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.

After three stanzas of this sort, in which the poet's style is more apparent than the object he describes, occurs this charming picture:--

Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
Of every flower that in the meadow was,
Or on her robe of many hues displayed;
But when she saw the youth before her pass,
Raising her timid head awhile she stayed;
Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
And stood, lap-full of flowers, in loveliness.

Then through the dewy field with footstep slow
The lingering maid began to take her way,
Leaving her lover in great fear and woe,
For now he longs for nought but her alway:
The wretch, who cannot bear that she should go,
Strives with a whispered prayer her feet to stay;
And thus at last, all trembling, all afire,
In humble wise he breathes his soul's desire:

'Whoe'er thou art, maid among maidens queen,
Goddess, or nymph--nay, goddess seems most clear--
If goddess, sure my Dian I have seen;
If mortal, let thy proper self appear!
Beyond terrestrial beauty is thy mien;
I have no merit that I should be here!
What grace of heaven, what lucky star benign
Yields me the sight of beauty so divine?'

A conversation ensues, after which Giuliano departs utterly lovesick, and Cupid takes wing exultingly for Cyprus, where his mother's palace stands. In the following picture of the house of Venus, who shall say how much of Ariosto's Alcina and Tasso's Armida is contained? Cupid arrives, and the family of Love is filled with joy at Giuliano's conquest. From the plan of the poem it is clear that its beauties are chiefly those of detail. They are, however, very great. How perfect, for example, is the richness combined with delicacy of the following description of a country life:--

BOOK I. STANZAS 17-21.

How far more safe it is, how far more fair,
To chase the flying deer along the lea;
Through ancient woods to track their hidden lair,
Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety:
To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air,
The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free;
To hear the birds wake from their winter trance,
The wind-stirred leaves and murmuring waters dance.

How sweet it were to watch the young goats hung
From toppling crags, cropping the tender shoot,
While in thick pleachèd shade the shepherd sung
His uncouth rural lay and woke his flute;
To mark, mid dewy grass, red apples flung,
And every bough thick set with ripening fruit,
The butting rams, kine lowing o'er the lea,
And cornfields waving like the windy sea.

Lo! how the rugged master of the herd
Before his flock unbars the wattled cote;
Then with his rod and many a rustic word
He rules their going: or 'tis sweet to note
The delver, when his toothèd rake hath stirred
The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote;
Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone,
Spins, while she keeps her geese 'neath yonder stone.

After such happy wise, in ancient years,
Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold;
Nor had the fount been stirred of mothers' tears
For sons in war's fell labour stark and cold;
Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers,
Nor yet had oxen groaning ploughed the wold;
Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store
Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.

Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursèd thirst
Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth:
Joyous in liberty they lived at first;
Unploughed the fields sent forth their teeming birth;
Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst
The bond of law, and pity banned and worth;
Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage
Which men call love in our degenerate age.

We need not be reminded that these stanzas are almost a cento from Virgil, Hesiod, and Ovid. The merits of the translator, adapter, and combiner, who knew so well how to cull their beauties and adorn them with a perfect dress of modern diction, are so eminent that we cannot deny him the title of a great poet. It is always in picture-painting more than in dramatic presentation that Poliziano excels. Here is a basrelief of Venus rising from the Ocean foam:--

STANZAS 99-107.

In Thetis' lap, upon the vexed Egean,
The seed deific from Olympus sown,
Beneath dim stars and cycling empyrean
Drifts like white foam across the salt waves blown;
Thence, born at last by movements hymenean,
Rises a maid more fair than man hath known;
Upon her shell the wanton breezes waft her;
She nears the shore, while heaven looks down with laughter

Seeing the carved work you would cry that real
Were shell and sea, and real the winds that blow;
The lightning of the goddess' eyes you feel,
The smiling heavens, the elemental glow:
White-vested Hours across the smooth sands steal,
With loosened curls that to the breezes flow;
Like, yet unlike, are all their beauteous faces,
E'en as befits a choir of sister Graces.

Well might you swear that on those waves were riding
The goddess with her right hand on her hair,
And with the other the sweet apple hiding;
And that beneath her feet, divinely fair,
Fresh flowers sprang forth, the barren sands dividing;
Then that, with glad smiles and enticements rare,
The three nymphs round their queen, embosoming her,
Threw the starred mantle soft as gossamer.

The one, with hands above her head upraised,
Upon her dewy tresses fits a wreath,
With ruddy gold and orient gems emblazed;
The second hangs pure pearls her ears beneath;
The third round shoulders white and breast hath placed
Such wealth of gleaming carcanets as sheathe
Their own fair bosoms, when the Graces sing
Among the gods with dance and carolling.

Thence might you see them rising toward the spheres,
Seated upon a cloud of silvery white;
The trembling of the cloven air appears
Wrought in the stone, and heaven serenely bright;
The gods drink in with open eyes and ears
Her beauty, and desire her bed's delight;
Each seems to marvel with a mute amaze--
Their brows and foreheads wrinkle as they gaze.

The next quotation shows Venus in the lap of Mars, and Visited by Cupid:--

STANZAS 122--124.

Stretched on a couch, outside the coverlid,
Love found her, scarce unloosed from Mars' embrace;
He, lying back within her bosom, fed
His eager eyes on nought but her fair face;

Roses above them like a cloud were shed,
To reinforce them in the amorous chace;
While Venus, quick with longings unsuppressed,
A thousand times his eyes and forehead kissed.

Above, around, young Loves on every side
Played naked, darting birdlike to and fro;
And one, whose plumes a thousand colours dyed,
Fanned the shed roses as they lay arow;
One filled his quiver with fresh flowers, and hied
To pour them on the couch that lay below;
Another, poised upon his pinions, through
The falling shower soared shaking rosy dew:

For, as he quivered with his tremulous wing,
The wandering roses in their drift were stayed;--
Thus none was weary of glad gambolling;
Till Cupid came, with dazzling plumes displayed,
Breathless; and round his mother's neck did fling
His languid arms, and with his winnowing made
Her heart burn:--very glad and bright of face,
But, with his flight, too tired to speak apace.

These pictures have in them the very glow of Italian painting. Sometimes we seem to see a quaint design of Piero di Cosimo, with bright tints and multitudinous small figures in a spacious landscape. Sometimes it is the languid grace of Botticelli, whose soul became possessed of classic inspiration as it were in dreams, and who has painted the birth of Venus almost exactly as Poliziano imagined it. Again, we seize the broader beauties of the Venetian masters, or the vehemence of Giulio Romano's pencil. To the last class belong the two next extracts:--

STANZAS 104--107.

In the last square the great artificer
Had wrought himself crowned with Love's perfect palm;
Black from his forge and rough, he runs to her,
Leaving all labour for her bosom's calm:
Lips joined to lips with deep love-longing stir,
Fire in his heart, and in his spirit balm;
Far fiercer flames through breast and marrow fly
Than those which heat his forge in Sicily.

Jove, on the other side, becomes a bull,
Goodly and white, at Love's behest, and rears
His neck beneath his rich freight beautiful:
She turns toward the shore that disappears,
With frightened gesture; and the wonderful
Gold curls about her bosom and her ears
Float in the wind; her veil waves, backward borne;
This hand still clasps his back, and that his horn.

With naked feet close-tucked beneath her dress,
She seems to fear the sea that dares not rise:
So, imaged in a shape of drear distress,
In vain unto her comrades sweet she cries;
They left amid the meadow-flowers, no less
For lost Europa wail with weeping eyes:
Europa, sounds the shore, bring back our bliss
But the bull swims and turns her feet to kiss.

Here Jove is made a swan, a golden shower,
Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain,
To work his amorous will in secret hour;
Here, like an eagle, soars he o'er the plain,
Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower
Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign;
The boy with cypress hath his fair locks crowned,
Naked, with ivy wreathed his waist around.

STANZAS 110--112.

Lo! here again fair Ariadne lies,
And to the deaf winds of false Theseus plains.
And of the air and slumber's treacheries;
Trembling with fear even as a reed that strain.
And quivers by the mere 'neath breezy skies:
Her very speechless attitude complains--
No beast there is so cruel as thou art,
No beast less loyal to my broken heart.

Throned on a car, with ivy crowned and vine,
Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven:
Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine
Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven
With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine
From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven,
Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements,
Laughing they roll or meet for glad embracements.

Upon his ass Silenus, never sated,
With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking,
Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated;
His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking:
Bold Mænads goad the ass so sorely weighted,
With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking
The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him,
E'en as he falls, upon the crupper bind him.

We almost seem to be looking at the frescoes in some Trasteverine palace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual Genoese painters. The description of the garden of Venus has the charm of somewhat artificial elegance, the exotic grace of style, which attracts us in the earlier Renaissance work:--

The leafy tresses of that timeless garden
Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten;
Frore winter never comes the rills to harden,
Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten;
Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden;
Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten;
Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding,
With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.

Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano's most eminent faculty as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius of the painters of his day. To produce pictures radiant with Renaissance colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion, was the function of his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and beauty of their pictures.

Of Poliziano's plagiarism--if this be the right word to apply to the process of assimilation and selection, by means of which the poet-scholar of Florence taught the Italians how to use the riches of the ancient languages and their own literature--here are some specimens. In stanza 42 of the 'Giostra' he says of Simonetta:--

E 'n lei discerne un non so che divino.

Dante has the line:--

Vostri risplende un non so che divino.

In the 44th he speaks about the birds:--

E canta ogni augelletto in suo latino.

This comes from Cavalcanti's:--

E cantinne gli augelli.
Ciascuno in suo latino.

Stanza 45 is taken bodily from Claudian, Dante, and Cavalcanti. It would seem as though Poliziano wished to show that the classic and medieval literature of Italy was all one, and that a poet of the Renaissance could carry on the continuous tradition in his own style. A, line in stanza 54 seems perfectly original:--

E già dall'alte ville il fumo esala.

It comes straight from Virgil:--

Et jam summa pocul villarum culmina fumant.

In the next stanza the line--

Tal che 'l ciel tutto rasserenò d'intorno,

is Petrarch's. So in the 56th, is the phrase 'il dolce andar celeste.' In stanza 57--

Par che 'l cor del petto se gli schianti,

belongs to Boccaccio. In stanza 60 the first line:--

La notte che le cose ci nasconde,

together with its rhyme, 'sotto le amate fronde,' is borrowed from the 23rd canto of the 'Paradiso.' In the second line, 'Stellato ammanto' is Claudian's 'stellantes sinus' applied to the heaven. When we reach the garden of Venus we find whole passages translated from Claudian's 'Marriage of Honorius,' and from the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid.

Poliziano's second poem of importance, which indeed may historically be said to take precedence of 'La Giostra,' was the so-called tragedy of 'Orfeo.' The English version of this lyrical drama must be reserved for a separate study: yet it belongs to the subject of this, inasmuch as the 'Orfeo' is a classical legend treated in a form already familiar to the Italian people. Nearly all the popular kinds of poetry of which specimens have been translated in this chapter, will be found combined in its six short scenes.

* * * * *

_ORFEO_

The 'Orfeo' of Messer Angelo Poliziano ranks amongst the most important poems of the fifteenth century. It was composed at Mantua in the short space of two days, on the occasion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's visit to his native town in 1472. But, though so hastily put together, the 'Orfeo' marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. It is the earliest example of a secular drama, containing within the compass of its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the tragedy, and the pastoral play. In form it does not greatly differ from the 'Sacre Rappresentazioni' of the fifteenth century, as those miracle plays were handled by popular poets of the earlier Renaissance. But while the traditional octave stanza is used for the main movement of the piece, Poliziano has introduced episodes of _terza rima_, madrigals, a carnival song, a _ballata_, and, above all, choral passages which have in them the future melodrama of the musical Italian stage. The lyrical treatment of the fable, its capacity for brilliant and varied scenic effects, its combination of singing with action, and the whole artistic keeping of the piece, which never passes into genuine tragedy, but stays within the limits of romantic pathos, distinguish the 'Orfeo' as a typical production of Italian genius. Thus, though little better than an improvisation, it combines the many forms of verse developed by the Tuscans at the close of the Middle Ages, and fixes the limits beyond which their dramatic poets, with a few exceptions, were not destined to advance. Nor was the choice of the fable without significance. Quitting the Bible stories and the Legends of Saints, which supplied the mediaeval playwright with material, Poliziano selects a classic story: and this story might pass for an allegory of Italy, whose intellectual development the scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power of poetry and art, softening stubborn nature, civilising men, and prevailing over Hades for a season. He is the right hero of humanism, the genius of the Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. To press this kind of allegory is unwise; for at a certain moment it breaks in our hands. And yet in Eurydice the fancy might discover Freedom, the true spouse of poetry and art; Orfeo's last resolve too vividly depicts the vice of the Renaissance; and the Mænads are those barbarous armies destined to lay waste the plains of Italy, inebriate with wine and blood, obeying a new lord of life on whom the poet's harp exerts no charm. But a truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let Mercury appear, and let the play begin.

_THE FABLE OF ORPHEUS_

MERCURY _announces the show_.

Ho, silence! Listen! There was once a hind,
Son of Apollo, Aristaeus hight,
Who loved with so untamed and fierce a mind
Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus wight,
That chasing her one day with will unkind
He wrought her cruel death in love's despite;
For, as she fled toward the mere hard by,
A serpent stung her, and she had to die.

Now Orpheus, singing, brought her back from hell,
But could not keep the law the fates ordain:
Poor wretch, he backward turned and broke the spell;
So that once more from him his love was ta'en.
Therefore he would no more with women dwell,
And in the end by women he was slain.

_Enter_ A SHEPHERD, _who says_--

Nay, listen, friends! Fair auspices are given,
Since Mercury to earth hath come from heaven.

SCENE I

MOPSUS, _an old shepherd_.

Say, hast thou seen a calf of mine, all white
Save for a spot of black upon her front,
Two feet, one flank, and one knee ruddy-bright?

ARISTAEUS, _a young shepherd_.

Friend Mopsus, to the margin of this fount
No herds have come to drink since break of day;
Yet may'st thou hear them low on yonder mount.
Go, Thyrsis, search the upland lawn, I pray!
Thou Mopsus shalt with me the while abide;
For I would have thee listen to my lay.

_[Exit_ THYRSIS.

'Twas yester morn where trees yon cavern hide,
I saw a nymph more fair than Dian, who
Had a young lusty lover at her side:
But when that more than woman met my view,
The heart within my bosom leapt outright,
And straight the madness of wild Love I knew.
Since then, dear Mopsus, I have no delight;
But weep and weep: of food and drink I tire,
And without slumber pass the weary night.

MOPSUS.

Friend Aristaeus, if this amorous fire
Thou dost not seek to quench as best may be,
Thy peace of soul will vanish in desire.
Thou know'st that love is no new thing to me:
I've proved how love grown old brings bitter pain:
Cure it at once, or hope no remedy;
For if thou find thee in Love's cruel chain,
Thy bees, thy blossoms will be out of mind,
Thy fields, thy vines, thy flocks, thy cotes, thy grain

ARISTAEUS.

Mopsus, thou speakest to the deaf and blind:
Waste not on me these wingèd words, I pray,
Lest they be scattered to the inconstant wind,
I love, and cannot wish to say love nay;
Nor seek to cure so charming a disease:
They praise Love best who most against him say.
Yet if thou fain wouldst give my heart some ease,
Forth from thy wallet take thy pipe, and we
Will sing awhile beneath the leafy trees;
For well my nymph is pleased with melody.

THE SONG.