GUILIO CARCANO, ARNALDO FUSINATO AND LUIGI MERCANTINI
No one could be more opposed, in spirit and method, to Aleardo Aleardi than Giulio Carcano; but both of these poets betray love and study of English masters. In the former there is something to remind us of Milton, of Ossian, who is still believed a poet in Latin countries, and of Byron; and in the latter, Arnaud notes very obvious resemblances to Gray, Crabbe, and Wordsworth in the simplicity or the proud humility of the theme, and the courage of its treatment. The critic declares the poet's aesthetic creed to be God, the family, and country; and in a beautiful essay on Domestic Poetry, written amidst the universal political discouragement of 1839, Carcano himself declares that in the cultivation of a popular and homelike feeling in literature the hope of Italy no less than of Italian poetry lies. He was ready to respond to the impulses of the nation's heart, which he had felt in his communion with its purest and best life, when, in later years, its expectation gave place to action, and many of his political poems are bold and noble. But his finest poems are those which celebrate the affections of the household, and poetize the pathetic beauty of toil and poverty in city and country. He sings with a tenderness peculiarly winning of the love of mothers and children, and I shall give the best notion of the poet's best in the following beautiful lullaby, premising merely that the title of the poem is the Italian infantile for sleep:
Sleep, sleep, sleep! my little girl:
Mother is near thee. Sleep, unfurl
Thy veil o'er the cradle where baby lies!
Dream, baby, of angels in the skies!
On the sorrowful earth, in hopeless quest,
Passes the exile without rest;
Where'er he goes, in sun or snow,
Trouble and pain beside him go.
But when I look upon thy sleep,
And hear thy breathing soft and deep,
My soul turns with a faith serene
To days of sorrow that have been,
And I feel that of love and happiness
Heaven has given my life excess;
The Lord in his mercy gave me thee,
And thou in truth art part of me!
Thou knowest not, as I bend above thee,
How much I love thee, how much I love thee;
Thou art the very life of my heart,
Thou art my joy, thou art my smart!
Thy day begins uncertain, child:
Thou art a blossom in the wild;
But over thee, with his wings abroad,
Blossom, watches the angel of God.
Ah! wherefore with so sad a face
Must thy father look on thy happiness?
In thy little bed he kissed thee now,
And dropped a tear upon thy brow.
Lord, to this mute and pensive soul
Temper the sharpness of his dole:
Give him peace whose love my life hath kept:
He too has hoped, though he has wept.
And over thee, my own delight,
Watch that sweet Mother, day and night,
To whom the exiles consecrate
Altar and heart in every fate.
By her name I have called my little girl;
But on life's sea, in the tempest's whirl,
Thy helpless mother, my darling, may
Only tremble and only pray!
Sleep, sleep, sleep! my baby dear;
Dream of the light of some sweet star.
Sleep, sleep! and I will keep
Thoughtful vigils above thy sleep.
Oh, in the days that are to come,
With unknown trial and unknown doom,
Thy little heart can ne'er love me
As thy mother loves and shall love thee!
II
Arnaldo Fusinato of Padua has written for the most part comic poetry, his principal piece of this sort being one in which he celebrates and satirizes the student-life at the University of Padua. He had afterward to make a formal reparation to the students, which he did in a poem singing their many virtues. The original poem of The Student is a rather lively series of pictures, from which we learn that it was once the habit of studious youth at Padua, when freshmen, or matricolini, to be terrible dandies, to swear aloud upon the public ways, to pass whole nights at billiards, to be noisy at the theater, to stand treat for the Seniors, joyfully to lend these money, and to acquire knowledge of the world at any cost. Later, they advanced to the dignity of breaking street-lamps and of being arrested by the Austrian garrison, for in Padua the students were under a kind of martial law. Sometimes they were expelled; they lost money at play, and wrote deceitful letters to their parents for more; they shunned labor, and failed to take degrees. But we cannot be interested in traits so foreign to what I understand is our own student-life. Generally, the comic as well as the sentimental poetry of Fusinato deals with incidents of popular life; and, of course, it has hits at the fleeting fashions and passing sensations: for example, Il Bloomerismo is satirized.
The poem which I translate, however, is in a different strain from any of these. It will be remembered that when the Austrians returned to take Venice in 1849, after they had been driven out for eighteen months, the city stood a bombardment of many weeks, contesting every inch of the approach with the invaders. But the Venetians were very few in number, and poorly equipped; a famine prevailed among them; the cholera broke out, and raged furiously; the bombs began to drop into the square of St. Mark, and then the Venetians yielded, and ran up the white flag on the dearly contested lagoon bridge, by which the railway traveler enters the city. The poet is imagined in one of the little towns on the nearest main-land.
The twilight is deepening, still is the wave;
I sit by the window, mute as by a grave;
Silent, companionless, secret I pine;
Through tears where thou liest I look, Venice mine.
On the clouds brokenly strewn through the west
Dies the last ray of the sun sunk to rest;
And a sad sibilance under the moon
Sighs from the broken heart of the lagoon.
Out of the city a boat draweth near:
“You of the gondola! tell us what cheer!”
“Bread lacks, the cholera deadlier grows;
From the lagoon bridge the white banner blows.”
No, no, nevermore on so great woe,
Bright sun of Italy, nevermore glow!
But o'er Venetian hopes shattered so soon,
Moan in thy sorrow forever, lagoon!
Venice, to thee comes at last the last hour;
Martyr illustrious, in thy foe's power;
Bread lacks, the cholera deadlier grows;
From the lagoon bridge the white banner blows.
Not all the battle-flames over thee streaming;
Not all the numberless bolts o'er thee screaming;
Not for these terrors thy free days are dead:
Long live Venice! She's dying for bread!
On thy immortal page, sculpture, O Story,
Others'iniquity, Venice's glory;
And three times infamous ever be he
Who triumphed by famine, O Venice, o'er thee.
Long live Venice! Undaunted she fell;
Bravely she fought for her banner and well;
But bread lacks; the cholera deadlier grows;
From the lagoon bridge the white banner blows.
And now be shivered upon the stone here
Till thou be free again, O lyre I bear.
Unto thee, Venice, shall be my last song,
To thee the last kiss and the last tear belong.
Exiled and lonely, from hence I depart,
But Venice forever shall live in my heart;
In my heart's sacred place Venice shall be
As is the face of my first love to me.
But the wind rises, and over the pale
Face of its waters the deep sends a wail;
Breaking, the chords shriek, and the voice dies.
On the lagoon bridge the white banner flies!
III
Among the later Italian poets is Luigi Mercantini, of Palermo, who has written almost entirely upon political themes—events of the different revolutions and attempts at revolution in which Italian history so abounds. I have not read him so thoroughly as to warrant me in speaking very confidently about him, but from the examination which I have given his poetry, I think that he treats his subjects with as little inflation as possible, and he now and then touches a point of naturalness—the high-water mark of balladry, to which modern poets, with their affected unaffectedness and elaborate simplicity, attain only with the greatest pains and labor. Such a triumph of Mercantini's is this poem which I am about to give. It celebrates the daring and self-sacrifice of three hundred brave young patriots, led by Carlo Pisacane, who landed on the coast of Naples in 1857, for the purpose of exciting a revolution against the Bourbons, and were all killed. In a note the poet reproduces the pledge signed by these young heroes, which is so fine as not to be marred even by their dramatic, almost theatrical, consciousness.