It is rarely indeed that we can trace a couple of these lyrics to the same brain--we may not say "to the same hand," for the folk-poet's hand is taken up with striking the anvil or guiding the plough; to more intellectual uses he does not put it--yet expressing as they do emotions which are not only the same at bottom, but are here felt and regarded in precisely the same way, there results so much unity of design and execution, that, as we read, unawares the songs weave themselves into slight pastoral idylls--typical peasant romances in which real _contadini_ speak to us of the new life wrought in them by love. Even the repeated mention of the Sicilian diminutives of the names of Salvatore and Rosina helps the illusion that a thread of personal identity connects together many of the fugitive _canzuni_. Thus we are tempted to imagine Turiddu and Rusidda as a pair of lovers dwelling in the sunny Conca d'Oro--he "so sweet and beautiful a youth, that God himself must surely have fashioned him"--a youth with "black and laughing eyes, and a little mouth from whence drops honey:" she a maiden of ... quattordicianni, L'occhi cilestri e li capiddi biunni-- "fourteen years, celestial eyes, blonde hair;" to see her long tresses "shining like gold spun by the angels," one would think "that she had just fallen out of Paradise." "She is fairer than the foam of the sea"-- "My little Rose in January born, Born in the month of cold and drifted snow, Its whiteness stays thy beauty to adorn, Nought than thy velvet skin more white can show. Thou art the star that shines, tho' bright the morn, And casts on all around a silver glow." But Rusidda's mother will have nothing to say to poor Turiddu; he complains, "Ah! God, what grief to have a tongue and not to be able to speak; to see her and dare not make any sign! Ah, God in heaven, and Virgin Mary, tell me what I am to do? I look at her, she looks at me, neither I nor she can say a word!" Then an idea strikes him; he gets a friend to take her a message: "When we pass each other in the street, we must not let the folk see that we are in love, but you will lower your eyes and I will lower my head; this shall be our way of saluting one another. Every saint has his day, we must await ours." Encouraged by this stratagem, Turiddu grows bold, and one dark night, when none can see who it is, he serenades his "little Rose:" "Sleep, sleep, my hope, yea sleep, nor be afraid, Sleep, sleep, my hope, in confidence serene, For if we both in the same scales be weighed, But little difference will be found between. Have you for me unfeigned love displayed, My love for you shall greater still be seen. If we could both in the same scales be weighed, But small the difference would be found between."