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:—