They were three hundred and they would not fly; They seemed three thousand and they chose to die. They chose to die with each his sword in hand. Before them ran their blood upon the land; I prayed for them while I could see them fight, But all at once I swooned and lost the sight; I saw no more with them that captain fair, With his blue eyes and with his golden hair. They were three hundred; they were young and strong, And they are dead. CONCLUSION Little remains to be said in general of poetry whose character and tendency are so single. It is, in a measure, rarely, if ever, known to other literatures, a patriotic expression and aspiration. Under whatever mask or disguise, it hides the same longing for freedom, the same impulse toward unity, toward nationality, toward Italy. It is both voice and force. It helped incalculably in the accomplishment of what all Italians desired, and, like other things which fulfill their function, it died with the need that created it. No one now writes political poetry in Italy; no one writes poetry at all with so much power as to make himself felt in men's vital hopes and fears. Carducci seems an agnostic flowering of the old romantic stalk; and for the rest, the Italians write realistic novels, as the French do, the Russians, the Spaniards--as every people do who have any literary life in them. In Italy, as elsewhere, realism is the ultimation of romanticism. Whether poetry will rise again is a question there as it is everywhere else, and there is a good deal of idle prophesying about it. In the mean time it is certain that it shares the universal decay. Compendio della Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Di Paolo Emiliano-Giudici. Firenze: Poligrafia Italiana, 1851. Della Letteratura Italiana. Esempj e Giudizi, esposti da Cesare Cantù. A Complemento della sua Storia degli Italiani. Torino: Presso l'Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1860. Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Di Francesco de Sanctis. Napoli: Antonio Morano, Editore, 1879. Saggi Critici. Di Francesco de Sanctis. Napoli: Antonio Morano, Librajo-Editore, 1869. I Contemporanei Italiani. Galleria Nazionale del Secolo XIX. Torino: Dall'Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1862. L'Italie est-elle la Terre des Morts? Par Marc-Monnier. Paris: Hachette & Cie., 1860. I Poeti Patriottici. Studii di Giuseppe Arnaud. Milano: 1862. The Tuscan Poet Giuseppe Giusti and his Times. By Susan Horner. London: Macmillan & Co., 1864. End of Project Gutenberg's Modern Italian Poets, by William Dean Howells