The soft west wind, returning, brings again
Its lovely family of herbs and flowers;
Progne’s gay notes, and Philomela’s strain
Vary the dance of spring-tide’s rosy hours;
And joyously o’er every field and plain,
Glows the bright smile that greets them from above,
And the warm spirit of reviving love
Breathes in the air and murmurs from the main.
But tears and sorrowing sighs, which gushingly
Pour from the secret chambers of my heart,
Are all that spring returning brings to me;
And in the modest smile, or glance of art,
The song of birds, the bloom of heath and tree,
A desert’s rugged tract and savage forms I see.
_Translation of_ G. W. GREENE. FRANCESCO PETRARCA, 1304–1374.
[Illustration: Morning]
IV.
=Morning.=
The morning song of Bellman, commencing, “Up, Amaryllis!” is one of the
most celebrated of the lyrical poems of Sweden. We are told that nothing
can exceed the enthusiasm with which it is sung in that country by high
and low, old and young, alike. The translation inserted in the ensuing
pages has been taken from the interesting work of the Howitts, on the
“Literature of Northern Europe.”