More richly endowed for poetry than Bembo was his fellow-countryman Andrea Navagero. Few Latin versifiers of the Renaissance combined so much true feeling and fancy with a style more pure and natural. Some of his little compositions, half elegy, half idyll, have the grace and freedom of the Greek Anthology.[465] There is a simple beauty in their motives, while the workmanship reminds us of chiselling in smooth waxy marble; unlike the Roman epigrammatists, Navagero avoided pointed terminations.[466] The picture of Narcissus dead and transformed to a flower, in the elegy of 'Acon,' might be quoted as a fair specimen of his manner:-- Magna Parens, quæ cuncta leves producis in auras, Totaque diverso germine picta nites; Quæ passim arboribus, passim surgentibus herbis, Sufficis omnifero larga alimenta sinu; Excipe languentem puerum, moribundaque membra, Æternumque tuâ fac, Dea, vivat ope. Vivet, et ille vetus Zephyro redeunte quotannis In niveo candor flore perennis erit.[467] [Footnote 465: Notice especially 'Thyrsidis vota Veneri,' 'Invitatio ad amoenum fontem,' 'Leucippem amicam spe præmiorum invitat,' 'Vota Veneri ut amantibus faveat,' and 'In Almonem.'--_Carmina_, &c. pp. 52, 53, 54, 55.] [Footnote 466: Paolo Giovio noticed this; in his _Elogia_ he writes, '_Epigrammata non falsis aculeatisque finibus, sed tenerâ illâ et prædulci priscâ suavitate claudebat._'] [Footnote 467: 'Mighty mother, thou who bringest all things forth to breathe the liquid air, who shinest in thy painted robe of diverse budding lives, thou who from thy teeming bosom givest nourishment to trees and sprouting herbs in every region of the earth, take to thyself the fainting boy, cherish his dying limbs, and make him live for ever by thy aid. Yes, he shall live; and that white loveliness of his, each year as spring returns, shall blossom in a snowy flower.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 57.] The warnings addressed to his mistress in her country rambles, to beware of rustic gods, and the whole eclogue of 'Iolas,' are written in a rich and facile style, that makes us wonder whether some poet of the Græco-Roman period did not live again in Navagero.[468] Only here and there, as in the case of all this neo-Latin writing, an awkward word or a defective cadence breaks the spell, and reminds us that it was an artificial thing. A few lines forming the exordium to an unfinished poem on Italy may be inserted here for their intrinsic interest:-- Salve, cura Deûm, mundi felicior ora, Formosæ Veneris dulces salvete recessus: Ut vos post tantos animi mentisque labores Aspicio, lustroque libens! ut munere vestro Sollicitas toto depello e pectore curas![469] [Footnote 468: 'Ad Gelliam rusticantem,' _Carmina_, &c. pp. 64-66. 'Iolas,' _ib._ pp. 66-68.]