The subject in itself is poor. The author must have felt this, even had he not been warned by Luca Pulci’s verses on the tournament of Lorenzo. The ‘Stanzas’—the title by which Poliziano’s poem is best known—are counted among the gems of Italian literature. They were the first of the kind expressing real melody without artificiality, being remarkable for their artistic flow and carefulness of composition. But for a few harsh and ignoble expressions, they have never since been surpassed in point of form, though Ariosto may have more variety and freedom of movement, and Tasso more harmony. But how do these beautiful stanzas of ottava rima treat their subject? In the first book it is left altogether out of sight. The tournament gives place to mythology, the Piazza Sta. Croce to the gardens and palace of Venus. All the flowers and trees of the most highly-favoured climates, all animals of the chase and the peaceful park, the whole of Olympus, are introduced; reminiscences of all the classic poets from Lucretius to Claudian, even to the Christian singers, wanderings of an exuberant fancy through the realms of beauty and love,—all these combine and disport themselves in such perfect freedom, that it matters not whether they have anything to do with the subject or not. At the beginning of the second book the poet seems at last to bethink himself that he intended to sing the praises of a Medici. He therefore makes Cupid relate to Venus the glories of the Tuscan race, and begins with the preparations for great deeds which such vast mythological machinery demands. The youth is awakened and armed, but not without assistance from Olympus. The poem breaks off abruptly, and in its closing stanzas there gleams a sad presentiment of the cruel fate which was so soon to put an end to a life apparently destined to glory and happiness, and with it to a work already highly valued as a fragment, and which gave the tone to the poetry of the age just beginning. Who shall say whether it was not well for the poem that it remained a fragment? for the disproportion between the unimportance of the subject and the pomp of the treatment might have come out too strikingly had it been continued. This poem, intended to celebrate the acts of Giuliano, is addressed to his brother. The dedicatory stanza speaks of Lorenzo without circumlocution as the ruler of Florence: High-born Lorenzo, laurel[38] in whose shade Thy Florence rests nor fears the lowering storm, Nor threatening signs in heaven’s high front displayed, Nor Jove’s dread anger in its fiercest form; O to the trembling Muse afford thine aid— The Muse that courts thee timorous and forlorn, Lives in the shadow of thy prosperous tree, And bounds her every fond desire to thee.[39]