“In the Country” includes eighteen charming little pieces in which the precision of the poet’s wording reveals itself with striking clearness. One tiny picture we may translate. Each object in it is distinct; and a feeling of aerial perspective is given to it by the long-drawn notes of the stornello which are suggested at its close.
October Evening.
Along the road, see, on the hedge
laugh bunches of red berries;
in the ploughed fields move homewards to the stall
slowly the oxen.
Comes down the road a beggar-man who drags
his slow step through sharp-rustling leaves:
in the fields a maiden raises to the wind her song:
Flower of the thornbush!
Two specially charming collections occur under the heading “Primavera” and “Dolcezze.” One little touch in the latter may perhaps be given.
With the Angels.
They were in flower, the lilacs and the olives:
and she sat sewing at a bridal dress:
nor had the air yet opened buds of stars,
nor the mimosa folded yet a leaf,
when she laughed out; yea, laughed, oh small black swallows;
laughed suddenly. But with whom, at what?
She laughed, so, with the angels, with those
clouds of gold, those clouds of rose-colour.
Girls sewing or weaving, it may be remarked in passing, occur often in Pascoli’s verse: one feels in them the pulse of the strong domestic affections that course through the poet’s inner life.