Renaissance in Italy Volume IV Part 44

If I diverge a hand's breadth from the way, One croaks, one scolds, while everybody cries, "Ware madman!" when he sees me trip or stray.

I've made my mind up to a hermit's life, So irksome are the crowd and all their strife.

Erewhile my Academe and my Gymnasia Were in the solitary woods I love, Whence I can see at will Afric or Asia; There nymphs with baskets tripping through the grove, Shower jonquils at my feet or colocasia: Far from the town's vexations there I'd rove, Haunting no more your Areopagi, Where folk delight in calumny and lie.

MORGANTE XXVII. 6.

Then answered Baldwin: "If my sire in sooth Hath brought us here by treason, as you say, Should I survive this battle, by G.o.d's truth, With this good sword I will my father slay!-- But, Roland, I'm no traitor--I forsooth, Who followed thee with love as clear as day!-- How could'st thou fling worse insult on thy friend?"

Then with fierce force the mantle he did rend,

And cried: "I will return into the fight, Since thou hast branded me with treason, thou!

I am no traitor! May G.o.d give me might, As living thou shalt see me ne'er from now!"

Straight toward the Paynim battle spurs the knight, Still shouting, "Thou hast done me wrong, I vow!"

Roland repents him of the words he spake, When the youth, mad with pa.s.sion, from him brake.

MORGANTE XXVIII. 138.

I ask not for that wreath of bay or laurel Which on Greek brows or Roman proudly shone: With this plain quill and style I do not quarrel, Nor have I sought to sing of Helicon: My Pegasus is but a rustic sorrel; Untutored mid the graves I still pipe on: Leave me to chat with Corydon and Thyrsis; I'm no good shepherd, and can't mend my verses.

Indeed I'm not a rash intrusive claimant, Like the mad piper of those ancient days, From whom Apollo stripped his living raiment, Nor quite the Satyr that my face bewrays.

A n.o.bler bard shall rise and win the payment Fame showers on loftier style and worthier lays: While I mid beech-woods and plain herdsmen dwell, Who love the rural muse of Pulci well.

I'll tempt the waters in my little wherry, Seeking safe shallows where a skiff may swim: My only care is how to make men merry With these thick-crowding thoughts that take my whim: 'Tis right that all things in this world should vary;-- Various are wits and faces, stout and slim, One dotes on white, while one dubs black sublime, And subjects vary both in prose and rhyme.

APPENDIX VI.

_Translations of Elegiac Verses by Girolamo Benivieni and Michelangelo Buonarroti._

(See page 321).

The heavenly sound is hushed, from earth is riven The harmony of that delighted lyre, Which leaves the world in grief, to gladden heaven.

Yea, even as our sobs from earth aspire, Mourning his loss, so ring the jocund skies With those new songs, and dance the angelic choir.

Ah happy he, who from this vale of sighs, Poisonous and dark, heavenward hath flown, and lost Only the vesture, frail and weak, that dies!

Freed from the world, freed from the tempest-tossed Warfare of sin, his splendor now doth gaze Full on the face of G.o.d through endless days.

Thou'rt dead of dying, and art made divine; Nor need'st thou fear to change or life or will; Wherefore my soul well-nigh doth envy thine.

Fortune and time across thy threshold still Shall dare not pa.s.s, the which mid us below Bring doubtful joyance blent with certain ill.

Clouds are there none to dim for thee heaven's glow; The measured hours compel not thee at all; Chance or necessity thou canst not know.

Thy splendor wanes not when our night doth fall, Nor waxes with day's light however clear, Nor when our suns the season's warmth recall.

END.