E i flutti ridono
Nel mar placati.”
“Ridono,” observe—laughter again—like his earlier countrymen, Horace and Lucretius. Our British poets rarely venture to make spring or summer do more than smile; they are afraid of the laughter of the south, as being quoad hoc an over-bold hyperbole. We can only quote at this moment two instances in which the laughter of more favoured lands is boldly introduced. John Langhorne, a poet and miscellaneous writer of the last century, author of the Fables of Flora, very beautifully says—
“Where Tweed’s soft banks in liberal beauty lie,
And Flora laughs beneath an azure sky.”
And Chaucer, the father of English poetry, has the following:—
“The busy larkë, messager of daye,
Salueth in hire song the morwe gray;
And fyry Phebus ryseth up so brighte,
That al the orient laugheth of the light.”—