While in ‘Nencia’ the popular and burlesque element prevails, the third of these idyls, ‘Ambra,’ belongs to the province of mythology. Its importance lies far less in the story itself—one of the oft-told tales after the Ovidian pattern—than in the grand descriptions of nature to which the fable gives rise. The scene is the villa of Poggio a Cajano, on the decoration of which the princely owner bestowed so much trouble and expense, the results of his work being repeatedly destroyed by the overflow of the Ombrone in its descent from the Pistojan mountains to the level ground around the low hill on which Cajano stood. A small islet in the river bore the name of Ambra, which was transferred to the villa itself. The dykes raised for its defence did not fulfil Poliziano’s hope that the stream would spare the flower-garden. In the poem, Ambra is the nymph beloved by the shepherd Lauro. Her charms, seen when bathing, attract the river god, and she only escapes from his wild pursuit by the help of Diana, who, at her entreaty, changes her into a rock, on which the villa is then built. As in ‘Nencia’ the ottava rima adapts itself to a burlesque and popular subject, so here it developes a surprising power in descriptions of the natural occurrences that caused the destruction of the pleasant rustic dwelling, and of the events which are made to precede them. As ‘Ambra’ inclines to the descriptive, so does another little poem in eight-line stanzas called ‘The Hawking Party’ (‘La Caccia con Falcone’), a lively picture of a universally favourite pastime to which our poet was almost passionately addicted. The fresh morning on which the party sets out, the adventures and intermezzos on the way, the rivalry and excitement of the huntsmen, the manœuvres of the chase, with the birds and dogs, carefully trained, yet not always to be relied on, the return in midday heat, and the cheerful meal, which reconciles the tired disputants and brings the day to a close,—all this is described with the most vivid reality, and with an amount of detail that could only come from an initiated sportsman. We are in the midst of the cheerful company that crowded around the gay and stately young man. For the poem dates some time before the year 1478, as is proved by the circumstance that Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, is one of the chief persons present, together with Luigi Pulci, Foglia Amieri, Dionigi Pucci, and several others less easy to distinguish by name. A whole stanza is taken up with the names of the falcons, the number of which shows that this was indeed a princely hunt, such as often took place at Pisa or Poggio a Cajano.