Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers

far in remotest shade untrodden:
that is the gulls, they say. Or divers, maybe?
Or the skua? Perhaps the skua – for when it flies
above the icefields, from a thousand nests
rises a strident cry; since with it draws a-near
Death’s self. Or was’t vain voiceless crying
in thine own heart? Nay, but the look-out heard them;
and in the look-out’s ear thou trustest.
Yea, but ’twas, sure, the roar of breakers,
crashing of rocks, howling of wind, the pant
of storms far off, yet nearing,
the sky, the sea, oh Norman seafarer!

II

Andrée was’t not. Centaur, to whose swift course
the cloud is mud, the empty wind firm ground,
towards the Great Bear he flew.
Followed his flight the hornèd elks at first;
then no one more; so that there was at last
but his great heart beating above the Pole.
For he had reached the confines of the evening,
and on the Polar peak immovable
stood, as on rock black eagle.
High overhead the ocean’s star burnt on
pendent, eternal lamp —
and in the lofty shadow seemed to sway.
And fixèd on his heart saw he, from this
wave, and from that, of every savage sea,
amid the calm, amid the roar of the tempest,
millions of eyes illumèd in the ray
that burned above his head; and instantly
cried he to all those eyes of that vast mirage
I reach my goal!

III

And then, below him, solemn rose the hymn
of holy swans hyperborean; slow
and intermittent ring of unknown harps;
the knell, far off and lone amid the wind,
of bells, the closing of great gates,
hard-turning with clear clang of silver.
Nor ever sounded erst that song more loud,
more suave. They sang, that all around,
alone, pure, infinite was Death.
And o’er the wingèd man came scorn of days
that rise and fall; hatred of all the vain
outgoings that foresee the garrulous return.
High was he on the peak; with human fate
beneath him. Andrée felt himself alone,
great, monarch, God!
Now died the hymn of the sacred flock away
in tremulous trumpet blast.
Then silence. O’er the Pole the star burnt on,
like the lonely lamp of a tomb.

With the “Poemetti,” published in 1897, we find ourselves in the second phase of Pascoli’s work. He and his sister have left their home in S. Mauro, with its heart-rending associations, and are settled in Barga. The trouble can be contemplated from a distance, can be reflected upon in its general outlines, and brought into harmony with life as a whole. But the poet’s mind has not taken refuge in the religion of the Church; he is very far from the sentiment of Tennyson’s In Memoriam. He finds his comfort in the delicious consciousness of quiet joy known only to those who have suffered without weakness; he finds his strength in the new perspective of life that is obtained by a fixed contemplation of the insignificant place our world holds in the Universe – of the reality of death, which for him ends all things. And this philosophy renders him very human: it focusses his affections upon his fellow mortals. Love, brotherly love, alone can keep our consciences at rest, and fully satisfy our aspirations – such is the earnest cry of this man across the threshold of whose life the hatred of a fellow man stretched the corpse of a murdered father.

The note of this philosophy is given at once in the preface of the “Poemetti,” addressed to his sister Maria. He gives a short indication, rather than description, of his new home with its church-towers and bells, its mountains and its rivers, its field-birds, its swallows, martins and rock-swallows, and then exclaims, addressing them: —

“Oh yes, there was a time when we did not live so near you. And if you knew what grief was ours then, what weeping, what noisy solitude, what secret and continuous anguish!” – “But come, man, think not on it,” you say to me. – “Nay, let us think on it. Know that the long sweetness of your voices is born of the echoes they arouse of that past grief: that things would not be so beautiful now had they not been so black before: that I should not find so much pleasure in small motives of joy, had the suffering not been so great; had it not come from all sources of grief, from Nature and from Society; and had it not wounded me soul and body, mind and feeling. Is it not so, Maria? Blessèd, then, blessèd be grief.”

And then, further on, after a charming picture of a martin that feeds, under his eaves, the abandoned nestlings of her enemy the swallow, he breaks out: —

“Men, I will speak as in a fable for children: Men, imitate that martin. Men, be content with little, and love each other within the limits of the family, of the nation, of humanity.”

Twice the poet returns to the same subject. A collection of four short pieces entitled “The Hermit,” compact with thought, ends as follows: —

IV

And the pale hermit veiled his eyes,
and lo throughout his heart there streamed
the sweet sleep of his weary life.
When he awoke (he was dropping
down broad, still writers in a drifting ship)
he cried: Let me remember, Lord!
God, let me dream! Nothing is more sweet,
God, than the end of grief, but ’tis
grievous to forget it; for ’tis hard
to cast away the flower that only smells when plucked.

In “The Two Children” two little ones, having come to blows in heroic fashion at their play one evening, are ignominiously swept off to bed by their mother. In the dark, full of denser shadows, their sobbing gradually ceases, they draw nearer to each other, and when the mother comes to look at them, shading the light with her hand, she finds them pressed close together, good beyond their wont, asleep. And she tucks them in with a smile. The third part takes up the parable as follows: —

III

Men! in the cruel hour when the wolf is lord,
think on the shade of destiny unknown
that wraps us round, and on the silence awesome

that reigns beyond the short noise of your brawling,
the clamour of your warring —
just a bee’s hum within an empty hive.

Peace, men! in the prone earth
too great’s the mystery, and only he
who gets him brethren in his fear errs not.

Peace, brethren! and let not the arms
that now ye stretch, or shall, to those most near,