[Footnote 21: Petrarch, "Trionfo della Morte," cap. i., lines 160-172]
The following translation is from the pen of Captain Macgregor:
"Not as a flame which suddenly is spent,
But one that gently finds its natural close,
To heaven, in peace, her willing spirit rose;
As, nutriment denied, a lovely light,
By fine gradations failing, less, less bright,
E'en to the last gives forth a lambent glow:
Not pale, but fairer than the virgin snow,
Falling, when winds are laid, on earth's green breast,
She seem'd a saint from life's vain toils at rest.
As if a sweet sleep o'er those bright eyes came,
Her spirit mounted to the throne of grace!
If this we, in our folly, Death do name,
Then Death seem'd lovely on that lovely face." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Macgregor's "Odes of Petrarch," p. 220.]
Juliet also is dead. Romeo contemplates her as she lies in her tomb, and he also expatiates upon her beauty:
* * * "O, my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there."
I need not insist upon the comparison; who does not feel how much more simple and beautiful the form of expression is in Petrarch? It is the brilliant and flowing poetry of the South, beside the strong, rough, and vigorous imagination of the North.
The love of Romeo for Rosaline is an invention of Luigi da Porto, retained in the poem of Arthur Brooke. This invention imparts so little interest to the first acts of the drama, that Shakspeare probably adopted it merely with a view to giving greater effect to that character of suddenness which distinguishes the passions of a Southern clime. The part of Mercutio was suggested to him by these lines of the English poem:
"A courtier that eche where was highly had in price,
For he was courteous of his speeche, and pleasant of devise.
Even as a lyon would emong the lambs be bolde,
Such was emong the bashful maydes Mercutio to beholde."