'Metamorphoses' of Ovid for his model of versification; and though we miss the variety of Ovid's treatment, great ingenuity is displayed in adorning so difficult a subject with poetical episodes.[435] Personal interest is added to the conclusion of 'Urania' by the lamentation poured forth for his daughter Lucia by the poet:-- Ornabam tibi serta domi; Syriumque liquorem Ad thalamos geminæ, geminæ, tua cura, sorores Fundebant. Quid pro sertis Syrioque liquore Liquisti? Sine sole dies, sine sidere noctes, Insomnes noctes.[436] [Footnote 432: I shall quote from his _Collected Poems_, Aldus, 1513.] [Footnote 433: See the Elegy of Sannazzaro on the writings of Pontanus, _Poemata Selecta_, pp. 1-4, and Fracastoro's _Syphilis_, ib. p. 72.] [Footnote 434: _Delitiæ Poetarum Italorum_, pt. ii. pp. 668-712. Specimens may also be read in the _Poemata Selecta Italorum_, pp. 1-24.] [Footnote 435: See, for instance, the tale of Hylas, lib. v. p. 103; the tale of Cola Pesce, lib. iv. p. 79; the council of the gods, lib. i. p. 18; the planet Venus, lib. i. p. 5.] [Footnote 436: Lib. v. pp. 105-108. 'For thee I hung the house with wreaths; and thy twin sisters poured forth Syrian perfumes at the marriage chamber. What for our garlands and our perfumes hast thou left? Days without light, nights without a star, long sleepless nights.'] Lucia died before her marriage-day, and her grey-headed father went mourning for her, fooled by memory, vainly seeking the joy that could not come again. Had she become, he asks, a star in heaven, and did the blessed gods and heroines enjoy her splendour? No voice replied when he called into the darkness, nor did new constellations beam on him with brightness from his daughter's eyes. All through the wakeful night he mourned, but when dawn went forth he marked a novel lustre on the sea and in the sky. Lucia had been added to the nymphs of morning. She smiled upon her father as she fled before the wheels of day; and now the sun himself arose, and in his light her light was swallowed: Hyperion scaled the heights of heaven with more than his own glory. With this apotheosis of his daughter, so curiously Pagan in feeling, and yet so far from classical in taste, the poem might have ended, had not Pontano reserved its final honours for himself. To Lucia, now made a goddess, he addresses his prayers that she should keep his name and fame alive on earth when he is dead:-- Fama ipsa assistens tumulo cum vestibus aureis, Ore ingens, ac voce ingens, ingentibus alis, Per populos late ingenti mea nomina plausu Vulgabit, titulosque feret per sæcula nostros; Plaudentesque meis resonabunt laudibus auræ, Vivet et extento celeber Jovianus in ævo.[437]