Part 26
Hills, valleys, caves and fells, With flowers and leaves and herbage spread; Green meadows; shadowy groves where light is low; Lawns watered with the rills That cruel Love hath made me shed, Cast from these cloudy eyes so dark with woe; Thou stream that still dost know What fell pangs pierce my heart, So dost thou murmur back my moan; Lone bird that chauntest tone for tone, While in our descant drear Love sings his part: Nymphs, woodland wanderers, wind and air; List to the sound out-poured from my despair! Seven times and once more seven The roseate dawn her beauteous brow Enwreathed with orient jewels hath displayed; Cynthia once more in heaven Hath orbed her horns with silver now; While in sea waves her brother's light was laid; Since this high mountain glade Felt the white footsteps fall Of that proud lady, who to spring Converts whatever woodland thing She may o'ershadow, touch, or heed at all. Here bloom the flowers, the grasses spring From her bright eyes, and drink what mine must bring. Yea, nourished with my tears Is every little leaf I see, And the stream rolls therewith a prouder wave. Ah me! through what long years Will she withhold her face from me, Which stills the stormy skies howe'er they rave? Speak! or in grove or cave If one hath seen her stray, Plucking amid those grasses green Wreaths for her royal brows serene, Flowers white and blue and red and golden gay! Nay, prithee, speak, if pity dwell Among these woods, within this leafy dell! O Love! 'twas here we saw, Beneath the new-fledged leaves that spring From this old beech, her fair form lowly laid:-- The thought renews my awe! How sweetly did her tresses fling Waves of wreathed gold unto the winds that strayed Fire, frost within me played, While I beheld the bloom Of laughing flowers--O day of bliss!-- Around those tresses meet and kiss, And roses in her lap of Love the home! Her grace, her port divinely fair, Describe it, Love! myself I do not dare. In mute intent surprise I gazed, as when a hind is seen To dote upon its image in a rill; Drinking those love-lit eyes, Those hands, that face, those words serene, That song which with delight the heaven did fill, That smile which thralls me still, Which melteth stones unkind, Which in this woodland wilderness Tames every beast and stills the stress Of hurrying waters. Would that I could find Her footprints upon field or grove! I should not then be envious of Jove. Thou cool stream rippling by, Where oft it pleased her to dip Her naked foot, how blest art thou! Ye branching trees on high, That spread your gnarled roots on the lip Of yonder hanging rock to drink heaven's dew! She often leaned on you, She who is my life's bliss! Thou ancient beech with moss o'ergrown, How do I envy thee thy throne, Found worthy to receive such happiness! Ye winds, how blissful must ye be, Since ye have borne to heaven her harmony! The winds that music bore, And wafted it to God on high, That Paradise might have the joy thereof. Flowers here she plucked, and wore Wild roses from the thorn hard by: This air she lightened with her look of love: This running stream above, She bent her face!--Ah me! Where am I? What sweet makes me swoon? What calm is in the kiss of noon? Who brought me here? Who speaks? What melody? Whence came pure peace into my soul? What joy hath rapt me from my own control?
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.