As the years passed the Queen was able to serve both the poet and her country, for Carducci’s health and finances became impaired. In 1899 he suffered a stroke of paralysis which crippled him somewhat but he continued his work at the University, assisted by his favorite pupil, the poet Severino Ferrari. That he might not be obliged to sell his valuable library the Queen purchased this, with the arrangement that he might use it during his life. After his death she purchased his home, also, and gave this to the Italian people as a memorial, “Casa Carducci,” with a beautiful garden, adorned with statuary that symbolizes some of his poems. In 1904 the government gave him a pension and the University students honored him with a celebration. The next year the sudden death of his assistant, Ferrari, was a terrible loss to him and left him enfeebled in body and spirit. When the Nobel prize was awarded the next year, he was unable to leave his chair to receive it; the King of Sweden sent a deputy to Bologna to give the testimonial in person to the aged poet. He lived only two months after this honor; his funeral at Bologna was attended by thousands. Because of his Florentine descent and his literary rank, the city of Florence offered for him a tomb in Sta. Croce, the Italian Pantheon, but his family preferred a burial place just outside Bologna. As a poet Carducci mingled vigor and grace to an unusual degree. He was an artist both in his conceptions and his forms; he never left a poem unfinished. His historical odes, resultant from his classical studies, are less impressive than such lyrics as “Night,” “Fiesole,” “Idyll of the Maremma,” “Before San Guido,” “Virgil,” and “Primo Vere” which are found in translations by Mrs. Maud Holland.[51] A wistful sadness is found in many of his poems of nature and life, a sensitiveness to insincerity, a change from a mood of hopefulness to that of longing and question. Such poetic traits are marked in the poem, “Primo Vere,” a delicate spring-song with gentle sadness; Behold! from sluggish winter’s arms Spring lifts herself again; Naked before the steel-cold air She shivers, as in pain, Look, Lalage, is that a tear In the sun’s eye that shines so clear? Today my spirit sleeps and dreams, Where do my far thoughts fly? Close to thy beauty’s face we stand And smile, the spring and I: Yet, Lalage, whence come those tears? Has Spring, too, felt the doom of years?[52]