They were in flower, the lilacs and the olives:
and she sat sewing at a bridal dress:
nor had the air yet opened buds of stars,
nor the mimosa folded yet a leaf,
when she laughed out; yea, laughed, oh small black swallows;
laughed suddenly. But with whom, at what?
She laughed, so, with the angels, with those
clouds of gold, those clouds of rose-colour.
Girls sewing or weaving, it may be remarked in passing, occur often in
Pascoli’s verse: one feels in them the pulse of the strong domestic
affections that course through the poet’s inner life.
In “_Tristezze_” Nature breathes different suggestions: it has the
sweet languidness of a fine autumn day, with recollections of a gentle
melancholy. A good many people have written about empty nests; but the
touch, in the following quotation, of the feather on the point of being
blown away, yet clinging on, is surely individual.