_Now that my wings are spread to my desire, The more vast height withdraws the dwindling land, Wider to wind these pinions I expand, And earth disdain, and higher mount and higher: Nor of the fate of Icarus inquire, Nor cautious droop, or sway to either hand; Dead I shall fall, full well I understand; But who lives gloriously as I expire? Yet hear I my own heart that pleading cries, Stay, madman, whither art thou bound? descend! Ruin is ready Rashness to chastise. But I, Fear not, though this indeed the end; Cleave we the clouds, and praise our destinies, If noble fall on noble flight attend._ Suspicion, jealousy, bitterly wounded feeling, open breach, and hollow reconciliation make up the remainder of the sonnets, the best of which have few superiors in any literature for fire and passion. His other poetical performances are far from inconsiderable. The best known is the sin of his youth, the _Vendemmiatore_, whose ultra-Fescennine truth to rustic manners and the licence of the vintage brought it into the Index, and its author into gaol. In quite a different key are his delightful didactic poems, _Il Podere_, on the management of an estate, and _La Balía_, on the care of children, translated by Roscoe. Some of his familiar _Capitoli_ are very pleasing, and some of his miscellaneous poems are very fine, especially this on the Spaniards slain by the Turks at Castel Nuovo, on the coast of Dalmatia: _Hail, scene of fated Valour’s final stand, Revered far these sad heaps of whitening bone, Their trace who other monument have none, Pyreless and tombless on this desert strand; Who hitherward from far Iberian land To Adria’s shores on blast of battle blown, With streaming blood of foemen, and their own, Came to empurple foreign sea and sand. Three hundred Fabii gave immortal name To ancient Tiber; what to Spain by death Heroic of three thousand shall be given? Greater the host, more excellent the aim Of warrior martyrs; those their dying breath Resigned to Italy, and these to heaven._