They weep. I see, see, see. They form
a circle, wrapped in the ceaseless booming.
They still wait, and they must wait.
The dead sons cling about the father
unavenged. Sits in a tomb,
I see, I see in midst of them, my mother.
_Sunt lacrymae rerum._ Pascoli returns to his father’s death more than
once in these early poems: never with impotent cries against man or
destiny, but with a sense as it were of wide-eyed wonder at the pity
of the thing. Here are a few verses characteristic of his attitude;
characteristic, too, of his daring simplicity of expression, relieved,
just as there is a fear of its sinking into mere prose, by some equally
daring conception that throws a vivid light over all that has gone
before.
August 10th.
St. Laurence’ day. I know’t, because so many
stars through the quiet air
burn, fall; because so great a weeping
gleams in the concave sky.
A swallow was returning to her roof;
they killed her; ’mid the thorns she fell
She had an insect in her beak:
the supper for her nestlings.
Now she lies there as on a cross, and holds
that worm out to that far-off sky;
and in the shadow waits for her her nest;
its chirping fainter comes and fainter.
A man, too, was returning to his nest.
They killed him; he spoke: Pardon!
And in his open eyes remained a cry.
He bore two dolls as gifts....
There in the lonely cottage, now,
in vain they wait and wait for him:
He motionless, astonished, shows
the dolls to the far-off sky.
And thou, oh sky, from far above the worlds
serene—infinite sky, immortal—
oh! with thick-falling tears of stars inundate
this atom dark of Evil.
Such poems bear, however, but a small proportion to the rest of the
work even in the first edition of the _Myricæ_, and a still smaller
proportion in the later editions. The note is struck and left for a
time: heard again, it has been developed into a theme whose harmonies
are rich and deep.
The _Myricæ_, now in its fifth edition, is a collection of the shortest
of poems. Many of them are but a few lines long, that pass in Italian
like the brush of wings and cannot be rendered in our heavier English.
Now it is a little picture, cut like a sixteenth century cameo, of
some detail of the country or of country life, generally with just
a touch at the end that relieves the feeling of pure objectiveness,
and suggests the Infinite which lies around and behind the fragment
presented; now it is some philosophical maxim or reflection which has
evidently become part of the poet’s individuality; now an impression
of infancy, childhood, girlhood, old age; now a fine-wrought point of
irony to prick the ignorance and arrogance of the Philistine.
A consideration of Pascoli’s relation to Nature and the peasantry
immediately suggests a comparison with Wordsworth. It is, however,
a curious fact that the more one attempts to fix the similarity
between the two, the more elusive does it prove to be. We might
say, tentatively, that Pascoli is both more pagan and more human,
notwithstanding _Margaret_ and _Michael_, than Wordsworth. He is more
pagan in that his delight in the beauty of a natural object is more
self-sufficing, therefore more intense; it is a delight that suggests
no defined religious or quasi-religious ideas, though there is always
a feeling, conscious or sub-conscious, that the object is an organic
part of the Universe. He is more human in that the peasants too attract
him more for their own sakes than for the moral reflections to which
they may give rise. They are, moreover, peasants in the full sense
of the word. They are an inseparable part of their surroundings, and
their interest derives from their unbroken contact with Nature, who
now favours, now destroys their toil. A carefully thought out parallel
study of the two poets would without doubt be interesting: it would
have to set out from the fact that the fundamentals of the philosophy
of the two men are essentially different: the Christianity and
Platonism of the English poet being replaced in the Italian—citizen of
a nation which is rapidly casting off metaphysical speculation—by a
frank facing of the possibilities and probabilities opened up by modern
scientific research, by a passionate longing for truth built upon the
rock of scientific fact. A reference to the poet’s lecture entitled
_L’Era Nuova_ (The New Era) will put this point beyond dispute.
Among the poems which mark most strongly this fundamental difference
and this elusive similarity between Wordsworth and Pascoli is that
published in the _Marzocco_ of August 19th, and entitled _Inno del
Mendico_. The simplicity of the diction, the spaciousness of the
atmosphere, the patient resignation of the beggar-man, his harmony with
the upland and the lake which form a setting for him, at once suggest
Wordsworth; but the details of the poem are so totally different from
any conception of Wordsworth’s that a second reading shows the likeness
to be superficial. Pascoli is too thoroughly modern in his scientific
attitude, notwithstanding his Latin affinities (or perhaps if the
matter be well thought out partly in consequence of them), to have many
points of contact with any of the early Victorian English poets.
As for the _Myricæ_, the poems are so varied that it is difficult
to characterise or to illustrate them. Some of the most individual
and attractive—“_Dialogue_” (between sparrows and swallows),
“_Hoof-beats_,” and others—are very delicate word-imitations of
movements, of sounds, of mental states even: and the verbal imitation
is quite inseparable from the conception. The poet himself groups
his little “swallow-flights of song” under a number of heads; but
is nevertheless constrained to leave many standing alone. Thus we
have a set of ten headed “_From Dawn to Sunset_,” in which occurs
the “_Hoof-beats_” already mentioned; another group entitled
“_Remembrances_” in which is the little poem above quoted on the
anniversary of his mother’s death; another headed “_Thoughts_”—short
but pregnant reflections of a philosophical character; “_Young
Things_”—five tiny pieces which reveal a tender sympathy with young
illusions, springing from a deep sense of the contrast between the
world of the children and the reality into which they have been born.
We may perhaps quote a couple as they emphasize the feeling for
contrasts visible in other parts of Pascoli’s work.