“Bacchus dictating strains among the rocks, while the nymphs, the goat-footed satyrs, listen.” “The Thracian Priestess upon the mountain, her knotted hair bound with vipers.” The carver of gems could find inspiration as frequently as poets. To prove he did, we have only to look into cabinets of collectors. The poets who copied him have been many. There were Ronsard, the Pleiad, in old French days. Tennyson, Ernest Dowson, in our own day, and in English, to mention few. He left indelible trace upon poets of Italy. They found a model ready made in a tongue their own. There are lines of d’Annunzio that suggest Horace because they keep interest in natural things; fresh, loving vision. However, it is not Latin poets who influenced d’Annunzio, but Greek. He drank from the fountain from which Horace drank when he boasted he was first to attune Greek meters to the Latin lyre. D’Annunzio likes better the Greeks of a later day, in Alexandria, who were softer muscled, more luxurious, although his tragedies show the _fate_—_motif_ of a sterner, _artistically speaking_, purer age. Carducci dreamed architecturally of the Rome of Horace and Augustus. He has built pictures in the _Odi Barbare_ that are memorable, splendid. As society poet Horace set a model which has been imitated but never equaled. He brought to it polished, perfect expression, and the _savoir faire_ of a courtier. The most perfect society verse in the world is the _Ode to Pyrrha_ (Ode V), because of equilibrium between matter and form, grace of poise, bantering lightness. In such verse no one has said more endearing things, more gracefully insincere. We may presume his social gift was considerable. In the portraits we find a touch at times, that is almost Japanesque; the habit of fixing fleeting, inconsequential thoughts without logical beginning. They are airy fancies that strike the mind obliquely in rapid flight. Centuries ago he sounded, tentatively, the shrill clarions of today.