_Beneath the white full-moon the murmuring seas Send songs of love across the pine-tree glade; The moonlight filtering through the dome-topped trees Fills with weird light the vast and secret shade; A fresh salt perfume on the Illyrian breeze From sea-weeds on the rock is hither swayed, While my sad heart, worn out and ill at ease, A wild poetic longing doth invade._ _But now more joyous still the love-songs flow O’er waves of silver sea; from pine to pine A sweet name echoes in the winds that blow; And, hovering through yon spaces diamantine, A phantom fair with silent flight and slow, Smiles on me from its great-orbed eyes divine._ At the same time D’Annunzio has another style, principally exhibited in his minor lyrics and his ballad romances, where simple but perfect melody is mated with hearty vigour. The contrast between Tennyson’s _Palace of Art_ and his _Edward Gray_ is hardly greater than that between the brilliant poetical landscape just quoted, and this joyous _aubade_:-- _While yet the veil of misty dew Conceals the morning flush,_ (How light of foot the foxes’ crew Are scampering in the bush!) _On damask bed my Clara spends In dreams the idle hours:_ (Warm the wet meadow’s breath ascends, And herbs are sweet as flowers.) _Lift, lovely lady all amort, The glory of your head._ (The hounds are yelling in the court Enough to wake the dead.) _Hear’st not the note of merry horn That calls thee to the chase?_ (In glades of ancient oak and thorn The deer hath left his trace.) _With manly vesture, trim and tight, Those budding breasts be bound;_ (I hear thy jennet neigh delight, And paw the paven ground.) _Soho! my beauty! down the stairs At last! Aha! Huzza!_ (Red morning o’er the mountain flares.) _To saddle! and away!_ It is manifest that although the Carduccis and D’Annunzios of the present day may not rank higher as poets than the Montis and Leopardis of the past, they have done far more to fit the Italian lyre with new strings, and have opened up paths of progress formerly undreamed of. Many of the novel and exotic forms they have introduced will richly repay cultivation, but the problem will be to employ the technique acquired by their practice to the embellishment and elevation of forms more adapted for general use. This the great master of modern Italian poetry has seen, and, magnificently as he has handled the more elaborate harmonies, it is the simple, popular song that he invokes after all, while incomparably exemplifying it: _Cura e onor de’ padri miei, Tu mi sei Come lor sacra e diletta. Ave, o rima: e dammi un fiore Per l’amore, E per l’odio una saetta._