See round the youth the purpled band Of venerable fathers stand; Exulting crowds around him throng, And hail him as he moves along. Strong in our cause and in our friends, Our righteous battle Jove defends; Thy useless sorrows then represt, Let joy once more dilate thy breast. To animate the clay-cold frame, No sighs shall fan the vital flame; Nor all the tears that love can shed Recall to life the silent dead. The poem seems to have had little or no effect, and the poet himself became infected with melancholy. ‘The news from this place,’ wrote Poliziano to Madonna Lucrezia, on November 18, ‘is that it rains violently and incessantly, so that it is impossible to leave the house, and instead of hunting we have taken to playing ball, that the children may have exercise. I sit by the fire in dressing-gown and slippers, and if you saw me you would take me for melancholy incarnate; for that is what I seem to myself. I do, see, hear nothing that cheers me, so deeply have our misfortunes affected me. Sleeping or waking, I have nothing in my head but these fancies. The day before yesterday we were all in joyful excitement, because we heard that the sickness had ceased. Now we are down again, as there is said to be some still going about. In town we have at least some comfort, if it is only that of seeing Lorenzo come home safe and well. Here, everything makes us uneasy, and I assure you I am dying of melancholy, such a burthen is loneliness to me. Monsignore (Becchi) shuts himself up in his own room, with no company but his thoughts; and I find him so cast down and full of care that his society only increases my own sadness. Ser Alberto del Malerba (a priest who was then in the Medicean household) recites the service all day long with the children. When I am tired of studying, my fancy goes off on a chase through pestilence and war—grief for the past, anxiety for the future. I have no one to turn my thoughts to him, and am dying of weariness. And here I have not my Madonna Lucrezia to whom I can vent my feelings.’