We must not close this most inadequate notice of the _Myricæ_ without mentioning the refined tenderness of one of the closing poems, too long to quote, entitled “_Colloquio_.” The poet’s mother, a figure of infinite sweetness, mute and shadowy, yet real, revisits the familiar house-places with her son; and a few incidental touches put before us an idyllic sketch of the home with its plants and the two housewifely sisters, so different in character. As a contrast to the details of the _Myricæ_ we may here quote a poem that appeared (December 1897) in the _Nuova Antologia_. Breadth of silent space has as great a fascination for Pascoli as have the tender details of home and country life. He had already in one of the “_Poemetti_” dwelt with longing on the northern regions whither the wild swans fly, where the _aurora borealis_ lights up the infinite polar gloom, where mountains of eternal ice rest on the sea as on a pavement; and Andrée’s balloon expedition to the Pole especially fired his imagination. The poem that bears the traveller’s name was written when, after long silence, there was a report that human cries had been heard on the Sofjord. In the Italian, the first part, broken by questionings and doubtings has an effect of uncertainty, like the uneasy straining of the balloon at its rope; from it the second part rises with a sure, strong leap and sinks gently at the end. ANDRÉE. I. No, no. The voice borne faint athwart the gloomy air from the realms of ice, like human cries, was but the petrel’s screech, that loves the lonely rocks, the storms unheard. Or maybe (was it not like children’s wailing?) maybe the sea-gull’s. A sound uplifts itself of wailful limboes far in remotest shade untrodden: that is the gulls, they say. Or divers, maybe? Or the skua? Perhaps the skua—for when it flies above the icefields, from a thousand nests rises a strident cry; since with it draws a-near Death’s self. Or was’t vain voiceless crying in thine own heart? Nay, but the look-out heard them; and in the look-out’s ear thou trustest. Yea, but ’twas, sure, the roar of breakers, crashing of rocks, howling of wind, the pant of storms far off, yet nearing, the sky, the sea, oh Norman seafarer! II.