Orphan.
Slowly the snow falls, flake on flake:
listen, a cradle rocks so gently.
A baby cries, with tiny thumb in mouth;
an old dame sings with chin in hand.
The old dame sings:—“Around thy little bed
roses and lilies grow, a lovely garden.”
The baby in the cradle falls asleep:
the snow falls slowly, flake on flake.
It will be perceived that it is not only the child in age whose illusions are touched on. The wider symbolism is at once apparent.
From the sixteen poems included in “The Last Walk,” we may perhaps quote one that illustrates Pascoli’s tendency to parable.
The Dog.
We, while the world goes on its road
eat out our hearts, and double is our torment,
because it moves, because it moves so slowly.
So, when the lumb’ring waggon passes by
the cottage, and the heavy dray-horse
imprints the soil with thudding hoofs,
the dog springs from the hedgerow, swift as wind,
runs after it, before it; whines and bays.
The waggon has passed onward slowly, slowly;
the dog comes sneezing back to the farm-yard.