We get the flavor of this, at least the literary flavor, the satire, and the irony, but it inevitably falls somewhat cold upon us, because it had its origin in a condition of things which, though historical, are so opposed to all our own experience that they are hard to be imagined. Yet we can fancy the effect such a poem must have had, at the time when it was written, upon a people who felt in the midst of their aspirations some disturbing element from without, and believed this to be espionage and Austrian interference. If the poem had also to be passed about secretly from one hand to another, its enjoyment must have been still keener; but strip it of all these costly and melancholy advantages, and it is still a piece of subtle and polished satire. Most of Giusti's poems, however, are written in moods and manners very different from this; there is sparkle and dash in the movement, as well as the thought, which I cannot reproduce, and in giving another poem I can only hope to show something of his varying manner. Some foreigner, Lamartine, I think, called Italy the Land of the Dead,--whereupon Giusti responded with a poem of that title, addressed to his friend Gino Capponi: THE LAND OF THE DEAD. 'Mongst us phantoms of Italians,-- Mummies even from our birth,-- The very babies' nurses Help to put them under earth. 'T is a waste of holy water When we're taken to the font: They that make us pay for burial Swindle us to that amount. In appearance we're constructed Much like Adam's other sons,-- Seem of flesh and blood, but really We are nothing but dry bones. O deluded apparitions, What do _you_ do among men? Be resigned to fate, and vanish Back into the past again! Ah! of a perished people What boots now the brilliant story? Why should skeletons be bothering About liberty and glory? Why deck this funeral service With such pomp of torch and flower? Let us, without more palaver, Growl this requiem, of ours. And so the poet recounts the Italian names distinguished in modern literature, and describes the intellectual activity that prevails in this Land of the Dead. Then he turns to the innumerable visitors of Italy: O you people hailed down on us From the living, overhead, With what face can you confront us, Seeking health among us dead? Soon or late this pestilential Clime shall work you harm--beware! Even you shall likewise find it Foul and poisonous grave-yard air. O ye grim, sepulchral friars Ye inquisitorial ghouls, Lay down, lay down forever, The ignorant censor's tools. This wretched gift of thinking, O ye donkeys, is your doom; Do you care to expurgate us, Positively, in the tomb? Why plant this bayonet forest On our sepulchers? what dread Causes you to place such jealous Custody upon the dead?