Oh, children—groans the father ’mid the black swish of the water—ye whom I hear no more for many years! Another churchyard perhaps received you, and maybe you call your mother as you shiver naked ’neath the black hissing rainstorms. And from your far-off dwelling you stretch out your arms to me, as I do mine to you, oh sons, in vain despair. Oh, children, children! Could I only see you! For I would tell you how in that one instant for an entire eternity I loved you. In that one minute ere I died I raised my hand up to my bleeding head, and blessed you all, my children. And again:— They weep. I see, see, see. They form a circle, wrapped in the ceaseless booming. They still wait, and they must wait. The dead sons cling about the father unavenged. Sits in a tomb, I see, I see in midst of them, my mother. _Sunt lacrymae rerum._ Pascoli returns to his father’s death more than once in these early poems: never with impotent cries against man or destiny, but with a sense as it were of wide-eyed wonder at the pity of the thing. Here are a few verses characteristic of his attitude; characteristic, too, of his daring simplicity of expression, relieved, just as there is a fear of its sinking into mere prose, by some equally daring conception that throws a vivid light over all that has gone before. August 10th. St. Laurence’ day. I know’t, because so many stars through the quiet air burn, fall; because so great a weeping gleams in the concave sky. A swallow was returning to her roof; they killed her; ’mid the thorns she fell She had an insect in her beak: the supper for her nestlings. Now she lies there as on a cross, and holds that worm out to that far-off sky; and in the shadow waits for her her nest; its chirping fainter comes and fainter. A man, too, was returning to his nest. They killed him; he spoke: Pardon! And in his open eyes remained a cry. He bore two dolls as gifts.... There in the lonely cottage, now, in vain they wait and wait for him: He motionless, astonished, shows the dolls to the far-off sky. And thou, oh sky, from far above the worlds serene—infinite sky, immortal— oh! with thick-falling tears of stars inundate this atom dark of Evil. Such poems bear, however, but a small proportion to the rest of the work even in the first edition of the _Myricæ_, and a still smaller proportion in the later editions. The note is struck and left for a time: heard again, it has been developed into a theme whose harmonies are rich and deep.