“Redolent of joy and youth”
was technically denominated Katabaukalesis, of which scraps and fragments only, like those of the village song which lingered in the memory of Rousseau, have come down to us. The first verse of a Roman nursery air, which still, Pignorius[[431]] tells us, was sung in his time by the mothers of Italy, ran thus:—
“Lalla, Lalla; dorme aut lacte.
Lalla, Lalla; sleep or suck.”
The Sicilian poet, whose pictures of the ancient world are still so fresh and fragrant, has bequeathed to us a Katabaukalesis of extreme beauty and brevity which I have here paraphrastically translated:[[432]]—
“Sleep ye, that in my breast have lain,
The slumber sweet and light,
And wake, my glorious twins, again
To glad your mother’s sight.
O happy, happy be your dreams,