Chapter 1

How far more safe it is, how far more fair, To chase the flying deer along the lea; Through ancient woods to track their hidden lair, Far from the town, with long-drawn subtlety: To scan the vales, the hills, the limpid air, The grass and flowers, clear ice, and streams so free; To hear the birds wake from their winter trance, The wind-stirred leaves and murmuring waters dance.

How sweet it were to watch the young goats hung From toppling crags, cropping the tender shoot, While in thick pleachèd shade the shepherd sung His uncouth rural lay and woke his flute; To mark, mid dewy grass, red apples flung, And every bough thick set with ripening fruit, The butting rams, kine lowing o'er the lea, And cornfields waving like the windy sea.

Lo! how the rugged master of the herd Before his flock unbars the wattled cote; Then with his rod and many a rustic word He rules their going: or 'tis sweet to note The delver, when his toothèd rake hath stirred The stubborn clod, his hoe the glebe hath smote; Barefoot the country girl, with loosened zone, Spins, while she keeps her geese 'neath yonder stone.

After such happy wise, in ancient years, Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold; Nor had the fount been stirred of mothers' tears For sons in war's fell labour stark and cold; Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers, Nor yet had oxen groaning ploughed the wold; Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.

Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursèd thirst Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth: Joyous in liberty they lived at first; Unploughed the fields sent forth their teeming birth; Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst The bond of law, and pity banned and worth; Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage Which men call love in our degenerate age.

We need not be reminded that these stanzas are almost a cento from Virgil, Hesiod, and Ovid. The merits of the translator, adapter, and combiner, who knew so well how to cull their beauties and adorn them with a perfect dress of modern diction, are so eminent that we cannot deny him the title of a great poet. It is always in picture-painting more than in dramatic presentation that Poliziano excels. Here is a basrelief of Venus rising from the Ocean foam:--

STANZAS 99-107.

In Thetis' lap, upon the vexed Egean, The seed deific from Olympus sown, Beneath dim stars and cycling empyrean Drifts like white foam across the salt waves blown; Thence, born at last by movements hymenean, Rises a maid more fair than man hath known; Upon her shell the wanton breezes waft her; She nears the shore, while heaven looks down with laughter

Seeing the carved work you would cry that real Were shell and sea, and real the winds that blow; The lightning of the goddess' eyes you feel, The smiling heavens, the elemental glow: White-vested Hours across the smooth sands steal, With loosened curls that to the breezes flow; Like, yet unlike, are all their beauteous faces, E'en as befits a choir of sister Graces.

Well might you swear that on those waves were riding The goddess with her right hand on her hair, And with the other the sweet apple hiding; And that beneath her feet, divinely fair, Fresh flowers sprang forth, the barren sands dividing; Then that, with glad smiles and enticements rare, The three nymphs round their queen, embosoming her, Threw the starred mantle soft as gossamer.

The one, with hands above her head upraised, Upon her dewy tresses fits a wreath, With ruddy gold and orient gems emblazed; The second hangs pure pearls her ears beneath; The third round shoulders white and breast hath placed Such wealth of gleaming carcanets as sheathe Their own fair bosoms, when the Graces sing Among the gods with dance and carolling.

Thence might you see them rising toward the spheres, Seated upon a cloud of silvery white; The trembling of the cloven air appears Wrought in the stone, and heaven serenely bright; The gods drink in with open eyes and ears Her beauty, and desire her bed's delight; Each seems to marvel with a mute amaze-- Their brows and foreheads wrinkle as they gaze.

The next quotation shows Venus in the lap of Mars, and Visited by Cupid:--

STANZAS 122--124.

Stretched on a couch, outside the coverlid, Love found her, scarce unloosed from Mars' embrace; He, lying back within her bosom, fed His eager eyes on nought but her fair face;

Roses above them like a cloud were shed, To reinforce them in the amorous chace; While Venus, quick with longings unsuppressed, A thousand times his eyes and forehead kissed.

Above, around, young Loves on every side Played naked, darting birdlike to and fro; And one, whose plumes a thousand colours dyed, Fanned the shed roses as they lay arow; One filled his quiver with fresh flowers, and hied To pour them on the couch that lay below; Another, poised upon his pinions, through The falling shower soared shaking rosy dew:

For, as he quivered with his tremulous wing, The wandering roses in their drift were stayed;-- Thus none was weary of glad gambolling; Till Cupid came, with dazzling plumes displayed, Breathless; and round his mother's neck did fling His languid arms, and with his winnowing made Her heart burn:--very glad and bright of face, But, with his flight, too tired to speak apace.

These pictures have in them the very glow of Italian painting. Sometimes we seem to see a quaint design of Piero di Cosimo, with bright tints and multitudinous small figures in a spacious landscape. Sometimes it is the languid grace of Botticelli, whose soul became possessed of classic inspiration as it were in dreams, and who has painted the birth of Venus almost exactly as Poliziano imagined it. Again, we seize the broader beauties of the Venetian masters, or the vehemence of Giulio Romano's pencil. To the last class belong the two next extracts:--

STANZAS 104--107.

In the last square the great artificer Had wrought himself crowned with Love's perfect palm; Black from his forge and rough, he runs to her, Leaving all labour for her bosom's calm: Lips joined to lips with deep love-longing stir, Fire in his heart, and in his spirit balm; Far fiercer flames through breast and marrow fly Than those which heat his forge in Sicily.

Jove, on the other side, becomes a bull, Goodly and white, at Love's behest, and rears His neck beneath his rich freight beautiful: She turns toward the shore that disappears, With frightened gesture; and the wonderful Gold curls about her bosom and her ears Float in the wind; her veil waves, backward borne; This hand still clasps his back, and that his horn.

With naked feet close-tucked beneath her dress, She seems to fear the sea that dares not rise: So, imaged in a shape of drear distress, In vain unto her comrades sweet she cries; They left amid the meadow-flowers, no less For lost Europa wail with weeping eyes: Europa, sounds the shore, bring back our bliss But the bull swims and turns her feet to kiss.

Here Jove is made a swan, a golden shower, Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain, To work his amorous will in secret hour; Here, like an eagle, soars he o'er the plain, Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign; The boy with cypress hath his fair locks crowned, Naked, with ivy wreathed his waist around.

STANZAS 110--112.

Lo! here again fair Ariadne lies, And to the deaf winds of false Theseus plains. And of the air and slumber's treacheries; Trembling with fear even as a reed that strain. And quivers by the mere 'neath breezy skies: Her very speechless attitude complains-- No beast there is so cruel as thou art, No beast less loyal to my broken heart.

Throned on a car, with ivy crowned and vine, Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven: Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven, Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements, Laughing they roll or meet for glad embracements.

Upon his ass Silenus, never sated, With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking, Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated; His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking: Bold Mænads goad the ass so sorely weighted, With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him, E'en as he falls, upon the crupper bind him.

We almost seem to be looking at the frescoes in some Trasteverine palace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual Genoese painters. The description of the garden of Venus has the charm of somewhat artificial elegance, the exotic grace of style, which attracts us in the earlier Renaissance work:--

The leafy tresses of that timeless garden Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten; Frore winter never comes the rills to harden, Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten; Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden; Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten; Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding, With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.

Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano's most eminent faculty as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius of the painters of his day. To produce pictures radiant with Renaissance colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion, was the function of his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations. This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo. The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics: their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and beauty of their pictures.

Of Poliziano's plagiarism--if this be the right word to apply to the process of assimilation and selection, by means of which the poet-scholar of Florence taught the Italians how to use the riches of the ancient languages and their own literature--here are some specimens. In stanza 42 of the 'Giostra' he says of Simonetta:--

E 'n lei discerne un non so che divino.

Dante has the line:--

Vostri risplende un non so che divino.

In the 44th he speaks about the birds:--

E canta ogni augelletto in suo latino.

This comes from Cavalcanti's:--

E cantinne gli augelli. Ciascuno in suo latino.

Stanza 45 is taken bodily from Claudian, Dante, and Cavalcanti. It would seem as though Poliziano wished to show that the classic and medieval literature of Italy was all one, and that a poet of the Renaissance could carry on the continuous tradition in his own style. A, line in stanza 54 seems perfectly original:--

E già dall'alte ville il fumo esala.

It comes straight from Virgil:--

Et jam summa pocul villarum culmina fumant.

In the next stanza the line--

Tal che 'l ciel tutto rasserenò d'intorno,

is Petrarch's. So in the 56th, is the phrase 'il dolce andar celeste.' In stanza 57--

Par che 'l cor del petto se gli schianti,

belongs to Boccaccio. In stanza 60 the first line:--

La notte che le cose ci nasconde,

together with its rhyme, 'sotto le amate fronde,' is borrowed from the 23rd canto of the 'Paradiso.' In the second line, 'Stellato ammanto' is Claudian's 'stellantes sinus' applied to the heaven. When we reach the garden of Venus we find whole passages translated from Claudian's 'Marriage of Honorius,' and from the 'Metamorphoses' of Ovid.

Poliziano's second poem of importance, which indeed may historically be said to take precedence of 'La Giostra,' was the so-called tragedy of 'Orfeo.' The English version of this lyrical drama must be reserved for a separate study: yet it belongs to the subject of this, inasmuch as the 'Orfeo' is a classical legend treated in a form already familiar to the Italian people. Nearly all the popular kinds of poetry of which specimens have been translated in this chapter, will be found combined in its six short scenes.

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_ORFEO_

The 'Orfeo' of Messer Angelo Poliziano ranks amongst the most important poems of the fifteenth century. It was composed at Mantua in the short space of two days, on the occasion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's visit to his native town in 1472. But, though so hastily put together, the 'Orfeo' marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. It is the earliest example of a secular drama, containing within the compass of its brief scenes the germ of the opera, the tragedy, and the pastoral play. In form it does not greatly differ from the 'Sacre Rappresentazioni' of the fifteenth century, as those miracle plays were handled by popular poets of the earlier Renaissance. But while the traditional octave stanza is used for the main movement of the piece, Poliziano has introduced episodes of _terza rima_, madrigals, a carnival song, a _ballata_, and, above all, choral passages which have in them the future melodrama of the musical Italian stage. The lyrical treatment of the fable, its capacity for brilliant and varied scenic effects, its combination of singing with action, and the whole artistic keeping of the piece, which never passes into genuine tragedy, but stays within the limits of romantic pathos, distinguish the 'Orfeo' as a typical production of Italian genius. Thus, though little better than an improvisation, it combines the many forms of verse developed by the Tuscans at the close of the Middle Ages, and fixes the limits beyond which their dramatic poets, with a few exceptions, were not destined to advance. Nor was the choice of the fable without significance. Quitting the Bible stories and the Legends of Saints, which supplied the mediaeval playwright with material, Poliziano selects a classic story: and this story might pass for an allegory of Italy, whose intellectual development the scholar-poet ruled. Orpheus is the power of poetry and art, softening stubborn nature, civilising men, and prevailing over Hades for a season. He is the right hero of humanism, the genius of the Renaissance, the tutelary god of Italy, who thought she could resist the laws of fate by verse and elegant accomplishments. To press this kind of allegory is unwise; for at a certain moment it breaks in our hands. And yet in Eurydice the fancy might discover Freedom, the true spouse of poetry and art; Orfeo's last resolve too vividly depicts the vice of the Renaissance; and the Mænads are those barbarous armies destined to lay waste the plains of Italy, inebriate with wine and blood, obeying a new lord of life on whom the poet's harp exerts no charm. But a truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let Mercury appear, and let the play begin.

_THE FABLE OF ORPHEUS_

MERCURY _announces the show_.

Ho, silence! Listen! There was once a hind, Son of Apollo, Aristaeus hight, Who loved with so untamed and fierce a mind Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus wight, That chasing her one day with will unkind He wrought her cruel death in love's despite; For, as she fled toward the mere hard by, A serpent stung her, and she had to die.

Now Orpheus, singing, brought her back from hell, But could not keep the law the fates ordain: Poor wretch, he backward turned and broke the spell; So that once more from him his love was ta'en. Therefore he would no more with women dwell, And in the end by women he was slain.

_Enter_ A SHEPHERD, _who says_--

Nay, listen, friends! Fair auspices are given, Since Mercury to earth hath come from heaven.