"I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name."
"Stanzas for Music," line 1, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 413.
[184] {148}[Compare the following lines from the canzone entitled, "La Prima di Tre Sorelle Scritte a Madaroa Leonora d'Este ... 1567:"—
"E certo il primo dì che'l bel sereno
Delia tua fronte agli occhi miei s'offerse
E vidi armato spaziarvi Amore,
Se non che riverenza allor converse,
E Meraviglia in fredda selce il seno,
Ivi pería con doppia morte il core;
Ma parte degli strali, e dell' ardore
Sentii pur anco entro 'l gelato marmo.">[
[185] {149}[Ariosto (Sat. 7, Terz. 53) complains that his father chased him "not with spurs only, but with darts and lances, to turn over old texts," etc.; but Tasso was a studious and dutiful boy, and, though he finally deserted the law for poetry, and "crossed" his father's wishes and intentions, he took his own course reluctantly, and without any breach of decorum. But, perhaps, the following translations from the Rinaldo, which Black supplies in his footnotes (i. 41. 97), suggested this picture of a "poetic child" at variance with the authorities:—
"Now hasting thence a verdant mead he found,
Where flowers of fragrant smell adorned the ground;
Sweet was the scene, and here from human eyes
Apart he sits, and thus he speaks mid sighs."
Canto I. stanza xviii.
"Thus have I sung in youth's aspiring days
Rinaldo's pleasing plains and martial praise:
While other studies slowly I pursued
Ere twice revolved nine annual suns I viewed;
Ungrateful studies, whence oppressed I groaned,
A burden to myself and to the world unknown.
Canto XII. stanza xc.]