We hardly notice the adventitious part of it--the ancient custom of tearing off the hair, the strange stone-casting at the youths who represent Charon; our attention is absorbed by what is the essence of the song: passion which has burned itself into pure fire. Greek folk-poetry shows a blending together of southern emotions with an imaginative fervour, a prophetic power that is rather of the East than of the South. No Tuscan ploughman, for instance, could seize the idea of the Greek folk-poet of possessing his living love in death. If the Tuscan thinks of a union in the grave, it can only be attained by the one who remains joining the one who is gone-- O friendly soil, Soil that doth hold my love in thine embrace, Soon as for me shall end life's war and toil Beneath thy sod I too would have a place; Where my love is, there do I long to be, Where now my heart is buried far from me-- Yes, where my love is gone I long to go, Robbed of my heart I bear too deep a woe. This stringer of pretty conceits fails to convince us that he is very much in earnest in his wish to die. Speaking in the sincerity of prose, the Tuscan says, "Ogni cosa e meglio che la morte." He does not believe in the nothingness of life. In his worst troubles he still feels that all his faculties, all his senses, are made for pleasure. Death is to him the affair of a not cheerful religious ceremony--a cross borne before a black draped bier, and bells tolling dolefully. I hear Death's step, I see him at my side, I feel his bony fingers clasp me round; I see the church's door is open wide, And for the dead I hear the knell resound. I see the cross and the black pall outspread; Love, thou dost lead me whither lie the dead! I see the cross, the winding-sheet I see; Love, to the graveyard thou art leading me! Going further south, a stage further is reached in crude externality of vision. People of the South are the only born realists. To them that comes natural which in others is either affectation or the fruits of what the French call _l'amour du laid_--a morbid love of the hideous, such as marred the fine genius of Baudelaire. At Naples death is a matter of corruption naked in the sunlight. When the Neapolitan takes his mandoline amongst the tombs he unveils their sorry secrets, not because he gloats over them, but because the habit of a reserve of speech is entirely undeveloped in him. He dares to sing thus of his lost love--