Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece Part 35

I dug the sea, and delved the barren sand: I wrote with dust and gave it to the wind: Of melting snow, false Love, was made thy band, Which suddenly the day's bright beams unbind.

Now am I ware, and know my own mistake-- How false are all the promises you make; Now am I ware, and know the fact, ah me!

That who confides in you, deceived will be.

It would scarcely be well to pause upon these very doleful ditties.

Take, then, the following little serenade, in which the lover on his way to visit his mistress has unconsciously fallen on the same thought as Bion (p. 85):--

Yestreen I went my love to greet, By yonder village path below: Night in a coppice found my feet; I called the moon her light to show-- O moon, who needs no flame to fire thy face, Look forth and lend me light a little s.p.a.ce!

Enough has been quoted to ill.u.s.trate the character of the Tuscan popular poetry. These village rispetti bear the same relation to the canzoniere of Petrarch as the 'savage drupe' to the 'suave plum.' They are, as it were, the wild stock of that highly artificial flower of art. Herein lies, perhaps, their chief importance. As in our ballad literature we may discern the stuff of the Elizabethan drama undeveloped, so in the Tuscan people's songs we can trace the crude form of that poetic instinct which produced the sonnets to Laura. It is also very probable that some such rustic minstrelsy preceded the Idylls of Theocritus and the Bucolics of Virgil; for coincidences of thought and imagery, which can scarcely be referred to any conscious study of the ancients, are not a few. Popular poetry has this great value for the student of literature: it enables him to trace those forms of fancy and of feeling which are native to the people, and which must ultimately determine the character of national art, however much that may be modified by culture.

_POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE_

The semi-popular poetry of the Italians in the fifteenth century formed an important branch of their national literature, and flourished independently of the courtly and scholastic studies which gave a special character to the golden age of the revival. While the latter tended to separate the people from the cultivated cla.s.ses, the former established a new link of connection between them, different indeed from that which existed when smiths and carters repeated the Canzoni of Dante by heart in the fourteenth century, but still sufficiently real to exercise a weighty influence over the national development. Scholars like Angelo Poliziano, princes like Lorenzo de'

Medici, men of letters like Feo Belcari and Benivieni, borrowed from the people forms of poetry, which they handled with refined taste, and appropriated to the uses of polite literature. The most important of these forms, native to the people but a.s.similated by the learned cla.s.ses, were the Miracle Play or 'Sacra Rappresentazione;' the 'Ballata' or lyric to be sung while dancing; the 'Canto Carnascialesco' or Carnival Chorus; the 'Rispetto' or short love-ditty; the 'Lauda' or hymn; the 'Maggio' or May-song; and the 'Madrigale' or little part-song.

At Florence, where even under the despotism of the Medici a show of republican life still lingered, all cla.s.ses joined in the amus.e.m.e.nts of carnival and spring time; and this poetry of the dance, the pageant, and the villa flourished side by side with the more serious efforts of the humanistic muse. It is not my purpose in this place to inquire into the origins of each lyrical type, to discuss the alterations they may have undergone at the hands of educated versifiers, or to define their several characteristics; but only to offer translations of such as seem to me best suited to represent the genius of the people and the age.

In the composition of the poetry in question, Angelo Poliziano was indubitably the most successful. This giant of learning, who filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with students of all nations, and whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of scholars.h.i.+p, was by temperament a poet, and a poet of the people.

Nothing was easier for him than to throw aside his professor's mantle, and to improvise 'Ballate' for the girls to sing as they danced their 'Carola' upon the Piazza di Santa Trinita in summer evenings. The peculiarity of this lyric is that it starts with a couplet, which also serves as refrain, supplying the rhyme to each successive stanza. The stanza itself is identical with our rime royal, if we count the couplet in the place of the seventh line. The form is in itself so graceful and is so beautifully treated by Poliziano that I cannot content myself with fewer than four of his _Ballate_.[30] The first is written on the world-old theme of 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.'

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

Violets and lilies grew on every side Mid the green gra.s.s, and young flowers wonderful, Golden and white and red and azure-eyed; Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful, To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

But when my lap was full of flowers I spied Roses at last, roses of every hue; Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride, Because their perfume was so sweet and true That all my soul went forth with pleasure new, With yearning and desire too soft to say.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell How lovely were the roses in that hour: One was but peeping from her verdant sh.e.l.l, And some were faded, some were scarce in flower: Then Love said: Go, pluck from the blooming bower Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

For when the full rose quits her tender sheath, When she is sweetest and most fair to see, Then is the time to place her in thy wreath, Before her beauty and her freshness flee.

Gather ye therefore roses with great glee, Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pa.s.s away.

I went a roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

The next Ballata is less simple, but is composed with the same intention. It may here be parenthetically mentioned that the courtly poet, when he applied himself to this species of composition, invented a certain rusticity of incident, scarcely in keeping with the spirit of his art. It was in fact a conventional feature of this species of verse that the scene should be laid in the country, where the burgher, on a visit to his villa, is supposed to meet with a rustic beauty who captivates his eyes and heart. Guido Cavalcanti, in his celebrated Ballata, 'In un boschetto trovai pastorella,' struck the keynote of this music, which, it may be reasonably conjectured, was imported into Italy through Provencal literature from the pastorals of Northern France. The lady so quaintly imaged by a bird in the following Ballata of Poliziano is supposed to have been Monna Ippolita Leoncina of Prato, white-throated, golden-haired, and dressed in crimson silk.

I found myself one day all, all alone, For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

I do not think the world a field could show With herbs of perfume so surpa.s.sing rare; But when I pa.s.sed beyond the green hedge-row, A thousand flowers around me flourished fair, White, pied and crimson, in the summer air; Among the which I heard a sweet bird's tone.

I found myself one day all, all alone, For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

Her song it was so tender and so clear That all the world listened with love; then I With stealthy feet a-tiptoe drawing near, Her golden head and golden wings could spy, Her plumes that flashed like rubies 'neath the sky, Her crystal beak and throat and bosom's zone.

I found myself one day all, all alone, For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

Fain would I snare her, smit with mighty love; But arrow-like she soared, and through the air Fled to her nest upon the boughs above; Wherefore to follow her is all my care, For haply I might lure her by some snare Forth from the woodland wild where she is flown.

I found myself one day all, all alone, For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

Yea, I might spread some net or woven wile; But since of singing she doth take such pleasure, Without or other art or other guile I seek to win her with a tuneful measure; Therefore in singing spend I all my leisure, To make by singing this sweet bird my own.

I found myself one day all, all alone, For pastime in a field with blossoms strewn.

The same lady is more directly celebrated in the next Ballata, where Poliziano calls her by her name, Ippolita. I have taken the liberty of subst.i.tuting Myrrha for this somewhat unmanageable word.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise, Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

From Myrrha's eyes there flieth, girt with fire, An angel of our lord, a laughing boy, Who lights in frozen hearts a flaming pyre, And with such sweetness doth the soul destroy, That while it dies, it murmurs forth its joy; Oh blessed am I to dwell in Paradise!

He who knows not what thing is Paradise, Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

From Myrrha's eyes a virtue still doth move, So swift and with so fierce and strong a flight, That it is like the lightning of high Jove, Riving of iron and adamant the might; Nathless the wound doth carry such delight That he who suffers dwells in Paradise.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise, Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

From Myrrha's eyes a lovely messenger Of joy so grave, so virtuous, doth flee, That all proud souls are bound to bend to her; So sweet her countenance, it turns the key Of hard hearts locked in cold security: Forth flies the prisoned soul to Paradise.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise, Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

In Myrrha's eyes beauty doth make her throne, And sweetly smile and sweetly speak her mind: Such grace in her fair eyes a man hath known As in the whole wide world he scarce may find: Yet if she slay him with a glance too kind, He lives again beneath her gazing eyes.

He who knows not what thing is Paradise, Let him look fixedly on Myrrha's eyes.

The fourth Ballata sets forth the fifteenth-century Italian code of love, the code of the Novelle, very different in its avowed laxity from the high ideal of the trecentisti poets.

I ask no pardon if I follow Love; Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

From those who feel the fire I feel, what use Is there in asking pardon? These are so Gentle, kind-hearted, tender, piteous, That they will have compa.s.sion, well I know.

From such as never felt that honeyed woe, I seek no pardon: nought they know of Love.

I ask no pardon if I follow Love; Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.

Honour, pure love, and perfect gentleness, Weighed in the scales of equity refined, Are but one thing: beauty is nought or less, Placed in a dame of proud and scornful mind.

Who can rebuke me then if I am kind So far as honesty comports and Love?

I ask no pardon if I follow Love; Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof.