[Footnote 477: 'Alas! poor youth, withdrawn from us by fate malign. Never again shall I behold thee, while the shepherds stand around, win prizes with thy flying shafts or spear, or wrestle for the crown; never again with thee reclining in the shade shall I all through a summer's day avoid the sun. No more shall thy pipe soothe the neighbouring hills, the vales repeat thy artful songs. No more shall thy Lycoris, whose name inscribed by thee the woods remember, and my Galatea hear us both together chaunt our loves. For we like brothers lived our lives till now from infancy: heat and cold, days and nights, we bore; our herds were reared with toil and care together. These fields of mine were also thine: we lived one common life. Why, then, when thou must die, am I still left to live? Alas! in evil hour the wrath of Heaven withdrew me from my native land, nor suffered me to close thy lids with a friend's hands!'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 91.] Castiglione's most polished exercises are written on fictitious subjects in elegiac metre. Thus he feigns a letter from his wife, in the style of the 'Heroidum Epistolæ,' praying him to beware of Rome's temptations, and to keep his heart for her.[478] Again he warns his mistress to avoid the perils of the sea-beach, where the Tritons roam:-- Os informe illis, rictus, oculique minaces, Asperaque anguineo cortice membra rigent: Barba impexa, ingens, algâ limoque virenti Oblita, oletque gravi lurida odore coma.[479] [Footnote 478: _Ib._ p. 100.] [Footnote 479: 'Hideous is their face, their grinning mouth, their threatening eyes, and their rough limbs are stiff with snaky scales; their beard hangs long and wide, uncombed, tangled with sea-weed and green ooze, and their dusky hair smells rank of brine.'--_Ib._ p. 103.] In these couplets we seem to read a transcript from some fresco of Mantegna or Julio Romano. Two long elegies are devoted to the theme of marine monsters, and the tale of Hippolytus is introduced to clinch the poet's argument. Among Castiglione's poems of compliment, forming a pleasant illustration to his book of the 'Courtier,' may be mentioned the lines on 'Elisabetta Gonzaga singing.'[480] Nor can I omit the most original of his elegies, written, or at least conceived, in the camp of Julius before Mirandola.[481] Walking by night in the trenches under the beleaguered walls, Castiglione meets the ghost of Lodovico Pico, who utters a lamentation over the wrongs inflicted on his city and his race. The roar of cannon cuts short this monologue, and the spectre vanishes into darkness with a groan. During his long threnody the prince of Mirandola apostrophises the warlike Pope in these couplets:--