Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 12

What has been well called _la volutta idillica_--the sensuous sensibility to beauty, finding fit expression in the Idyl--formed a marked characteristic of Renaissance art and literature. Boccaccio developed this idyllic motive in all his works which dealt with the origins of society. Poliziano and Lorenzo devoted their best poetry to the praise of rural bliss, the happiness of shepherd folk anterior to life in cities. The same theme recurs in the Latin poems of the humanists, from the sonorous hexameters of the _Rusticus_ down to the delicate hendecasyllables of the later Lombard school. It pervades the elegy, the ode, the sonnet, and takes to itself the chiefest honors of the drama. The vision of a Golden Age idealized man's actual enjoyment of the country, and hallowed, as with inexplicable pathos, the details of ordinary rustic life. Weary with Courts and worldly pleasures, in moments of revolt against the pa.s.sions and ambitions that wasted their best energies, the poets of that century, who were nearly always also men of state and public office, sighed for the good old times, when honor was an unknown name, and truth was spoken, and love sincere, and steel lay hidden in the earth, and s.h.i.+ps sailed not the sea, and old age led the way to death unterrified by coming doom. As time advanced, their ideal took form and substance. There rose into existence, for the rhymsters to wander in, and for the readers of romance to dream about, a region called Arcadia, where all that was imagined of the Golden Age was found in combination with refined society and manners proper to the civil state. A literary Eldorado had been discovered, which was destined to attract explorers through the next three centuries. Arcadia became the wonder-world of n.o.ble youths and maidens, at Madrid no less than at Ferrara, in Elizabeth's London and in Marie Antoinette's Versailles. After engaging the genius of Ta.s.so and Guarini, Spenser and Sidney, it degenerated into quaint conventionality. Companions of Turenne and Marlborough told tales of pastoral love to maids of honor near the throne. Frederick's and Maria Theresa's courtiers simpered and sighed like Dresden-china swains and shepherdesses. Crooked sticks with ribbons at the top were a fas.h.i.+onable appendage to red-heeled shoes and powdered perukes. Few phenomena in history are more curious than the prolonged prosperity and widespread fascination of this Arcadian romance.

To Sannazzaro belongs the glory of having first explored Arcadia, mapped out its borders, and called it after his own name. He is the Columbus of this visionary hemisphere. Jacopo Sannazzaro has more than once above been mentioned in the chapters devoted to Latin poetry.

But the events of his life have not yet been touched upon.[247] His ancestors claimed to have been originally Spaniards, settled in a village of Pavia called S. Nazzaro, whence they took their name. The poet's immediate forefather was said to have followed Charles of Durazzo in 1380 to the south of Italy, where he received fiefs and lands in the Basilicata. Jacopo was born at Naples in 1458, and was brought up in his boyhood by his mother at S. Cipriano.[248] He studied at Naples under the grammarian Junia.n.u.s Maius,[249] and made such rapid progress in both Greek and Latin scholars.h.i.+p as soon to be found worthy of a place in Pontano's Academy. In that society he a.s.sumed the pseudonym of Actius Sincerus. The friends.h.i.+p between Pontano and Sannazzaro lasted without interruption till the former's death in 1503. Their Latin poems abound in pa.s.sages which testify to a strong mutual regard, and the life-size effigies of both may still be seen together in the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples.[250]

Distinction in scholars.h.i.+p was, after the days of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a sure t.i.tle to consideration at the Neapolitan Court.

Sannazzaro attached himself to the person of Frederick, the second son of Ferdinand I.; and when this prince succeeded to the throne, he conferred upon the poet a pension of 600 ducats and the pleasant villa of Mergoglino between the city and Posillipo.[251] This recompense for past service was considerably below the poet's expectations and deserts; nor did he receive any post of state importance. Yet Sannazzaro remained faithful through his lifetime to the Aragonese dynasty. He attended the princes on their campaigns; espoused their quarrels in his fierce and potent series of epigrams against the Rovere and Borgia Pontiffs; and when Frederick retired to France in 1501, he journeyed into exile with his royal master, only returning to Naples after the ex-king's death. There Sannazzaro continued to reside until his own death in 1530. His later years were imbittered by the destruction of his Villa Mergellina during the occupation of Naples by the imperial troops under the Prince of Orange. But with the exception of this misfortune, he appears to have pa.s.sed a quiet and honorable old age, devoting himself to piety, contributing to charitable works and church-building, and employing his leisure in study and the society of a beloved lady, Ca.s.sandra Marchesa.

[Footnote 247: The chief sources of Sannazzaro's biography are a section of his _Arcadia_ (_Prosa_, vii.), and his Latin poems. The Sannazzari of Pavia had the honor of mention in Dante's _Convito_.

Among the poet's Latin odes are several addressed to the patron saint of his race. See _Sannazarii op. omn. Lat. scripta_ (Aldus, 1535), pp.

16, 53, 56, 59.]

[Footnote 248: Elegy, "Quod pueritiam egerit in Picentinis," _op.

cit._ p. 27.]

[Footnote 249: Elegy, "Ad Junianum Maium Praeceptorem," _op. cit._ p.

20.]

[Footnote 250: I may refer in particular to Sannazzaro's beautiful elegy "De Studiis suis et Libris Joviani Pontani" among his Latin poems, _op. cit._ p. 10. For their terra-cotta portraits, see above _Revival of Learning_, p. 365.]

[Footnote 251: Sannazzaro's two odes on "Villa Mergellina" and "Fons Mergellines" (_Op. cit._ pp. 31, 53), are among his purest and most charming Latin compositions.]

In his early youth Sannazzaro formed a romantic attachment for a girl of n.o.ble birth, called Carmosina Bonifacia. This love made him first a poet; and the majority of his Italian verses may be referred to its influence. They consist of sonnets and _canzoni_, modeled upon Petrarch, but marked by independence of treatment, and spontaneity of feeling. The puristic revival had not yet set in, and Sannazzaro's style shows no servile imitation of his model. It may not be out of place to give a specimen in translation of these early _Rime_. I have chosen a sonnet upon jealousy, which La Casa afterwards found worthy of rehandling:

Horrible curb of lovers, Jealousy, That with one force doth check and sway my will; Sister of loathed and impious Death, that still With thy grim face troublest the tranquil sky; Thou snake concealed in laughing flowers which lie Rocked on earth's lap; thou that my hope dost kill; Amid fair fortunes thou malignant ill; Venom mid viands which men taste and die!

From what infernal valley didst thou soar, O ruthless monster, plague of mortals, thou That darkenest all my days with misery o'er?

Hence, double not these griefs that cloud my brow!

Accursed fear, why camest thou? Was more Needed than Love's keen shafts to make me bow?

About the reality of Sannazzaro's pa.s.sion for Carmosina there can be no doubt. The most directly powerful pa.s.sages in the _Arcadia_ are those in which he refers to it.[252] His southern temperament exposed him to the fiercest pangs of jealousy; and when he found that love disturbed his rest and preyed upon his health he resolved to seek relief in travel. For this purpose he went to France; but he could not long endure the exile from his native country; and on his return he found his Carmosina dead. The elegies in which he recorded his grief, are not the least poetical of his compositions both in Latin and Italian.[253] After establis.h.i.+ng himself once more at Naples, Sannazzaro began the composition of the _Eclogae Piscatoriae_, in which he has been said to have brought the pastoral Muses down to the sea sh.o.r.e. The novelty of these poems secured for them no slight celebrity. Nor are they without real artistic merit. The charm of the sea is nowhere felt more vividly than on the bay of Naples, and nowhere else are the habits of a fis.h.i.+ng population more picturesque.

Nereids and Sirens, Proteus and Nisa, Cymothoe and Triton, are not out of place in modern verses, which can commemorate Naples, Ischia and Procida, under the t.i.tles of Parthenope, Inarime and Prochyte. Happy indeed is the poet, if he must needs write Latin elegies, whose home suggests such harmonies and cadences, for whom Baiae and c.u.mae and the Lucrine Lake, Puteoli and Capreae and Stabiae, are household words, and who looks from his study windows daily on scenes which realize the mythology still lingering in names and memories around them by beauty ever-present, inexpressible.

[Footnote 252: She is described in _Prosa_ iv., and frequently mentioned under the name of _Arancio_ or _Amaranta_.]

[Footnote 253: See the Epitaph "Hic Amarantha jacet," the last Eclogue of _Arcadia_, and the Latin eclogue "Mirabar vicina Mycon," in which Carmosina is celebrated under the name of Phyllis. I may here call attention to Pontano's elegy beginning "Harmosyne jacet hic" in the _Tumuli_, lib. ii. (_Joannis Joviani Pontani Amorum Libri, etc._, Aldus, 1518, p. 87).]

The second mistress of Sannazzaro's heart was a n.o.ble lady, Ca.s.sandra Marchesa. He paid his addresses to her _more Platonico_, and chose her for the object of refined compliments in cla.s.sical and modern verse.

The Latin elegies and epigrams are full of her praises; and one of the Eclogues, _Pharmaceutria_, is inscribed with her name. It would scarcely have been necessary to mention this courtly attachment, but for the pleasant light it casts upon Sannazzaro's character. The lady whom he had celebrated and defended in his manhood, was the friend of his old age. He is said to have died in her house.

The _Arcadia_ was begun at Nocera in Sannazzaro's youth, continued during his first residence in France, and finished on his return to Naples. So much can be gathered from its personal references. The book blends autobiography and fable in a narrative of very languid interest. The poet's circ.u.mstances and emotions in exile are described at one moment in plain language, at another are presented with the indirectness of an allegory. Arcadia in some pa.s.sages stands for a semi-savage country-district in France; in others it is the dream-world of poetry and pastoral simplicity. But in either case its scenery is drawn from Sannazzaro's own Italian home. The inhabitants are shepherds such as Virgil fancied, with even more of personal refinement. Through their lips the poet tells the tale of his own love, and paints his Neapolitan mistress among the nymphs of Mount Parthenion. Throughout, we note an awkward interminglement of subjective and objective points of view. Realism merges into fancy.

Experience of life a.s.sumes the garb of myth or legend. Neither as an autobiographical romance nor again as a work of pure invention has the _Arcadia_ surpa.s.sing merit. Loose in construction and uncertain in aim, it lacks the clearness and consistency of perfect art. And yet it is a masterpiece; because its author, led by prescient instinct, contrived to make it reflect one of the deepest and most permanent emotions of his time. The whole pastoral ideal--the yearning after a golden age, the beauty and pathos of the country, the felicity of simple folk, the details of rustic life, the charm of woods and gardens, the mythology of Pan and Satyrs, Nymphs and Fauns--all this is expressed in a series of pictures, idyllically graceful, artistically felt. It is not for its story that we read _Arcadia_, but for the Feast of Pales, the games at Ma.s.silia's shrine, the Sacrifice to Pan, Androgeo's tomb, the group of girls a-maying, the carved work of the beechen cup, the pa.s.sion of Carino, the gardens with their flowers, and the bands of youths and maidens meeting under shadowy trees to dance and play. Pictures like these are presented with a scrupulous and loving sincerity, an anxious accuracy of studied style, which proves how serious was the author. His heart, as an artist, is in the realization of his dream-world; and his touch is firm and dry and delicate as Mantegna's. Indeed, we are constantly reminded of the Mantegnesque manner, and one reference justifies the belief that Sannazzaro strove to reproduce its effect.[254] The sensuousness of the Italian feeling for mere beauty is tempered with reticence and something of the coldness of Greek marbles. In point of diction, Boccaccio has been obviously imitated. But Boccaccio's style is not revived, as Masuccio strove to revive it, with the fire and energy of Southern pa.s.sion subst.i.tuted for its Tuscan irony and delicacy. On the contrary, the periods are still more artificial, the turns of phrase more tortured. Sannazzaro writes with difficulty in a somewhat unfamiliar language, rendered all the more stubborn by his endeavors to add cla.s.sical refinements. Boccaccio's humor is gone; his sensuality is purged by contact with antique examples; the waving groves of the _Filocopo_ are clipped and tutored like box-hedges in an academic garden. If there is less of natural raciness than came unsummoned to Boccaccio's aid, there is more of Virgil and Theocritus than he chose to appropriate. The slow deliberate expansion of each picture, stroke by stroke and touch by touch, reminds us of the _quattrocento_ painters; while the _precieusete_ of the phrasing has affinity to the manner of a late Greek stylist, especially perhaps, though almost certainly unconsciously, to that of Philostratus. This close correspondence of the _Arcadia_ to the main artistic sympathies of the Renaissance, rendered it indescribably popular in its own age, and causes it still to rank as one of the representative masterpieces of the epoch. Through its peculiar blending of cla.s.sical and modern strains--the feasts of Pales and of Pan taking color from Capo di Monte superst.i.tions; the nymphs of wood and river modeled after girls from Ma.s.sa and Sorrento; the yellow-haired shepherds of Mount Maenalus singing love-laments for Neapolitan Carmosina--we are enabled more nearly than in almost any other literary essay to appreciate the spirit of the cla.s.sical revival as it touched Italian art. A little earlier, there was more of spontaneity and _navete_. A little later, there was more of conscious erudition and consummate skill. The _Arcadia_ comes midway between the _Filocopo_ and the _Pastor Fido_.

[Footnote 254: In _Prosa_ xi. he mentions a vase painted by the "Padoano Mantegna, artefice sovra tutti gli altri accorto ed ingegnosissimo."]

It is time to turn from dissertation, and to detach, almost at haphazard, some of those descriptions which render the _Arcadia_ a storehouse of ill.u.s.trations to the pictures of the fifteenth century.

I will first select the frescoes on the front of Pales' chapel, endeavoring so far as possible to reproduce the intricacies and quaint affectations of the style.[255] The constant abuse of epithets, and the structure of the period by means of relatives, pegging its clauses down and keeping them in their places, will be noticed as part of the Boccaccesque tradition. "Intending now to ratify with souls devout the vows which had been made in former times of need, upon the smoking altars, all together in company we went unto the sacred temple, along whose frontal, raised upon a few ascending steps, we found above the doorway painted certain woods and hills of most delightful beauty, full of leafy trees and of a thousand sorts of flowers, among the which were seen many herds that went a-pasture, wending at pleasure through green fields, with peradventure ten dogs to guard them, the footsteps of the which upon the dust were traced most natural to the view. Of the shepherds, some were milking, some shearing wool, others playing on pipes, and there were there a few, who, as it seemed, were singing and endeavoring to keep in tune with these. But that which pleased me to regard with most attention were certain naked Nymphs, the which behind a chestnut bole stayed, as it were, half-hidden, laughing at a ram, who, in his eagerness to gnaw a wreath of oak that hung before his eyes, forgot to feed upon the gra.s.s around him. In that while came four Satyrs, with horns upon their heads and goat's feet, stealing through a shrubbery of lentisks, softly, softly, to take the maidens from behind. Whereof when they were ware, they took to flight through the dense grove, shunning nor thorns nor aught else that might annoy them; and of these one, nimbler than the rest, was clinging to a hornbeam's branches, and thence, with a long bough in her hands, defending herself. The others had cast themselves through fright into a river, wherethrough they fled a-swimming; and the clear water hid little or but nothing of their snow-white flesh. But whenas they saw themselves escaped, they sat them down on the further bank, fordone with toil and panting, drying their soaked hair, and thence with word and gesture seemed to mock at those who had not shown the power to capture them. And in one of the sides there was Apollo, with the yellowest hair, leaning upon a wand of wild olive, and watching Admetus' herds beside a river-bed; and thus, intently gazing on two sinewy bulls which jousted with their horns, he was not ware of wily Mercury, who in a shepherd's habit, with a kid-skin girded under his left shoulder, stole the cows away from him. And in that same s.p.a.ce stood Battus, the bewrayer of the theft, transformed into a stone, stretching his finger forth in act of one who pointed. A little lower, Mercury was seen again, seated upon a large stone, and playing with swollen cheeks upon a rustic pipe, while his eyes were turned to mark a white calf close beside him, and with most cunning arts he strove to cozen Argus of the many eyes. On the other side, at the foot of an exceeding high oak-tree, was stretched a shepherd asleep among his goats; and a dog stayed near him, smelling at his pouch, which lay beneath his head; and he, forasmuch as the moon gazed at him with glad eyes, methought must be Endymion. Next to him was Paris, who with his sickle had begun to carve _Oenone_ on an elm-tree's bark, and being called to judge between the naked G.o.ddesses that stood before him, had not yet been able to complete his work. But what was not less subtle in the thought than pleasant in the seeing was the shrewdness of the wary painter, who, having made Juno and Minerva of such extreme beauty that to surpa.s.s them was impossible, and doubting of his power to make Venus so lovely as the tale demanded, had painted her with back turned, covering the defect of art by ingenuity of invention. And many other things right charming and most beautiful to look upon, of the which I now have but a faulty memory, I saw there painted upon divers places." It is clear that Sannazzaro had not read Lessing's _Laoc.o.o.n_ or noted the distinctions between poetry and painting. Yet in this he was true to the spirit of his age; for actions no less continuous than some of those described by him, may be found represented in the frescoes of Gozzoli or Lippo Lippi.

[Footnote 255: _Prosa_ iii.]

The finished portrait of Sannazzaro's mistress Carmosina shall supply my next question.[256] The exile is listening to shepherds singing, and one of them has mentioned Amaranta. He knows that she is present, and resolves to choose her by her gestures from the rest. "With wary glance, watching now one and now another, I saw among the maidens one who seemed to me the loveliest. Her hair was covered with a very thin veil, beneath which two eyes, lovely and most brilliant, sparkled not otherwise than the clear stars are wont to s.h.i.+ne in a serene and limpid sky; and her face, inclining somewhat to the oval more than the round, of fair shape, with pallor that was not unpleasing, but tempered, as it were toward dark complexion turning, and relieved therewith by vermeil and gracious hues, filled with joy of love the eyes that gazed on her. Her lips were of the sort that surpa.s.s the morning roses; between the which, each time she spoke or smiled, she showed some portion of her teeth, of such rare and marvelous grace that I could not have compared them to aught else but orient pearls.

Thence pa.s.sing down to her marble and delicate throat, I saw upon that tender bosom the slight and youthful b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which, like two rounded apples, thrust her robe of finest texture somewhat forward; and in the midst of them I could discern the fairest little way, exceeding pleasant to the sight, the which, because it ended and escaped the view, was reason why I dwelt thereon with greater force of thought.

And she, with most delicate gait and a gentle and aspiring stature, went through the fair fields, with her white hand plucking tender flowers. With the which when she had filled her lap, no sooner had the singing youth within her hearing mentioned Amaranta, than, dropping her hands and gathered robe, and as it were lost to her own recollection, without her knowing what befell, they all slid from her grasp, sowing the earth with peradventure twenty sorts of colors.

Which, as though suddenly brought to herself, when she perceived, she blushed not otherwise than sometimes reddens the enchanted moon with rosy aspect, or as, upon the issuing of the sun, the red Aurora shows herself to mortal gaze. Whereupon she, not for any need methinks compelling her thereto, but haply hoping better thus to hide the blushes that came over her, begotten by a woman's modesty, bent toward earth again to pick them up, as though she cared for only that, choosing the white flowers from the crimson and the dark blue from the violet blossoms." Amaranta makes a pretty picture, but one which is too elaborate in detail. Her sisterhood is described with touches more negligent, and therefore the more artful.[257] "Some wore garlands of privet with yellow buds and certain crimson intermingled; others had white lilies and purple mixed with a few most verdant orange leaves between; one went starred with roses, and yon other whitened with jasmines. So that each by herself and altogether were more like to divine spirits than to human creatures. Whereupon many men there present cried with wonder: O blessed the possessor of such beauties!"

The young swains are hardly less attractive than their nymphs.[258]

"Logisto and Elpino, shepherds, comely of person and in years within the bounds of earliest youth: Elpino guardian of goats, Logisto of the woolly sheep: both with hair yellower than ripe ears of corn; both of Arcadia; both fit alike to sing and to make answer."

[Footnote 256: _Prosa_ iv.]

[Footnote 257: _Prosa_ iv.]

[Footnote 258: _Ibid._]

Sannazzaro's touch upon inanimate nature is equally precise. Here is a description of the evening sky.[259] "It was the hour when sunset embroidered all the west with a thousand varieties of clouds; some violet, some darkly blue, and certain crimson; others between yellow and black, and a few so burning with the fire of backward-beaten rays that they seemed as though of polished and finest gold." Here is a garden:[260] "Moved by sympathy for Ergasto, many shepherds had moreover wrought the place about with high hedges, not of thorns or briars, but of junipers, roses and jasmines, and had delved therein with their mattocks a pastoral seat, and at even s.p.a.ces certain towers of rosemary and myrtles interwoven with the most incomparable art."

Here are flowers:[261] "There were lilies, there privets, there violets toned to amorous pallor, and in large abundance the slumberous poppies with their leaning heads, and the ruddy spikes of the immortal amaranth, most comely of coronals mid winter's rudeness."

[Footnote 259: _Prosa_ v.]

[Footnote 260: _Prosa_ x.]

[Footnote 261: _Ibid._]

The same research of phrase marks the exhibition of emotion. Carino, the shepherd, tells how, overwhelmed with grief, he lay upon the ground and seemed lost to life:[262] "Came the oxherds, came the herdsmen of the sheep and goats, together with the peasants of the neighboring farms, deeming me distraught, as of a truth indeed I was; and all with deepest pity asked the reason of my woe. Unto whom I made no answer, but, minding my own weeping, thus with lamentable voice exclaimed: You of Arcady shall sing among your mountains of my death!

You of Arcady, who only have the art of song, you of my death shall sing amid your mountains!" His complaint extends to a length which defies quotation. But here is an extract from it:[263] "O G.o.ds of heaven and earth, and whosoe'er ye are who have regard for wretched lovers, lend, I pray, your ears of pity to my lamentation, and listen to the dolent cries my tortured spirit sendeth forth! O Naiads, dwellers in the running water brooks! O Napean nymphs, most gracious haunters of far places and of liquid fonts, lift up your yellow tresses but a little from the crystal waves, and receive these my last cries before I peris.h.!.+ O you, O fairest Oreads, who naked on the hanging cliffs are wont to go achase, leave now your lofty mountain realm, and in my misery visit me, for I am sure to win your sorrow by what brings my cruel maid delight! Come forth from your trees, O pitying Hamadryads, ye anxious guardians over them, and turn your thoughts a little toward the martyrdom these hands of mine prepare for me! And you, O Dryads, most beauteous damsels of the woods profound, ye who not once but many and many a time have watched our shepherds at the fall of eve in circle dancing neath the shadow of cool walnut trees, with yellowest curls a-ripple down their snow-white necks, cause now I pray, if you are not with my too changeful fortune changed, that mid these shades my death may not be mute, but ever grow from day to day through centuries to come, so that the tale of years life lacks, may go to lengthen out my fame!"

[Footnote 262: _Prosa_ viii.]

[Footnote 263: _Ibid._]

For English students the _Arcadia_ has a special interest, since it begot the longer and more ambitious work of Sir Philip Sidney.

Hitherto I have spoken only of its prose; but the book blends prose and verse in alternating sections. The verse consists of mingled _terza rima_, _canzoni_ and sestines. Not less artificial and decidedly less original than the prose, Sannazzaro's lyrics and eclogues do not demand particular attention. He put needless restraint upon himself by affecting the awkwardness of _sdrucciolo_ rhymes[264]; and he lacked the roseate fluency, the winning ease, the unaffected graces of Poliziano. One sestine, sung by himself among the shepherds of Arcady, I have translated, because it paints the actual conditions of life which drove Sannazzaro into his first exile.[265] But the singularly charmless form adopted, which even Petrarch hardly rendered tolerable, seems to check the poet's spontaneity of feeling.

[Footnote 264: Even in this Sidney tried to follow him, with an effect the clumsiness of which can only be conceived by those who have read his triple rhyming English _terza rima_.]

[Footnote 265: _Egloga_ vii.]

Even as a bird of night that loathes the sun, I wander, woe is me, through places dark, The while refulgent day doth s.h.i.+ne on earth; Then when upon the world descendeth eve, I cannot, like all creatures, sink in sleep, But wake to roam and weep among the fields.

If peradventure amid woods and fields, Where s.h.i.+nes not with his radiance the sun, Mine eyes, o'er-tired with weeping, close in sleep, Harsh dreams and wandering visions, vain and dark, Affright me so that still I shrink at eve, For fear of sleep, from resting on the earth.

O universal mother, kindly earth, Shall't ever be that, stretched on verdant fields, In slumber deep, upon that latest eve, I ne'er shall wake again, until the sun Rise to reveal his light to eyelids dark, And stir my soul again from that long sleep?

From that first moment when I banished sleep, And left my bed to lay myself on earth, The cloudless days for me were drear and dark, And turned to stubbly straw the flowery fields; So that when morn to men brings back the sun, It darkens round mine eyes in shadowy eve.

My lady, of her kindness, came one eve, Joyous and very fair, to me in sleep, And gladdened all my heart, even as the sun, When rains are past, is wont to clear the earth; And said to me: Come, gather from my fields Some flow'ret; cease to haunt those caverns dark.

Fly hence, fly hence, ye tedious thoughts and dark, That have obscured me in so long an eve!

For I'll go seek the sunny smiling fields, Taking upon their herbage honeyed sleep: Full well I know that ne'er man made of earth More blest than now I am beheld the sun!

Song, in mid eve thou'lt see the orient sun, And me neath earth among those regions dark, Or e'er on yonder fields I take my sleep.