"Rose of the sea, the dawn and the star Diana are shining: the song is done, farewell sweet Rosina."
One of these flower-poets, invoking the Violet by way of heading, tells his love that "all men who look on her forget their sorrows;" another takes his oath that she outrivals sun, and moon, and stars. "Jasmine of Araby," cries a third, "when thou art not near, I am consumed by rage." A fourth says, "White floweret, before thy door I make a great weeping." A fifth, night and day, bewails his evil fate. A sixth observes that he has been singing for five hours, but that he might just as well sing to the wind. A seventh feels the thorns of jealousy. An eighth asks, "Who knows if Rosa will not listen to another lover?" A ninth exclaims,
Flower of the night,
Whoever wills me ill shall die to-night!
With which ominous sentiment I will leave the ciuri, and pass on to the yet more interesting canzuni: little poems, usually in eight lines, of which there are so many thousand graceful specimens that it is embarrassing to have to make a selection.
Despite the wide gulf which separates lettered from illiterate poetry, it is curious to note the not unfrequent coincidence between the thought of the ignorant peasant bard and that of cultured poets. In particular, we are now and then reminded of the pretty conceits of Herrick, and also of the blithe paganism, the happy unconsciousness that "Pan is dead," which lay in the nature of that most incongruous of country parsons. Thus we find a parallel to "Gather ye Rosebuds:"
Sweet, let us pick the fresh and opening rose,
Which doth each charm of form and hue display:
Hard by the margent of yon font it blows,