Andrée was’t not. Centaur, to whose swift course the cloud is mud, the empty wind firm ground, towards the Great Bear he flew. Followed his flight the hornèd elks at first; then no one more; so that there was at last but his great heart beating above the Pole. For he had reached the confines of the evening, and on the Polar peak immovable stood, as on rock black eagle. High overhead the ocean’s star burnt on pendent, eternal lamp— and in the lofty shadow seemed to sway. And fixèd on his heart saw he, from this wave, and from that, of every savage sea, amid the calm, amid the roar of the tempest, millions of eyes illumèd in the ray that burned above his head; and instantly cried he to all those eyes of that vast mirage _I reach my goal!_ III. And then, below him, solemn rose the hymn of holy swans hyperborean; slow and intermittent ring of unknown harps; the knell, far off and lone amid the wind, of bells, the closing of great gates, hard-turning with clear clang of silver. Nor ever sounded erst that song more loud, more suave. They sang, that all around, alone, pure, infinite was Death. And o’er the wingèd man came scorn of days that rise and fall; hatred of all the vain outgoings that foresee the garrulous return. High was he on the peak; with human fate beneath him. Andrée felt himself alone, great, monarch, God! Now died the hymn of the sacred flock away in tremulous trumpet blast. Then silence. O’er the Pole the star burnt on, like the lonely lamp of a tomb. With the “_Poemetti_,” published in 1897, we find ourselves in the second phase of Pascoli’s work. He and his sister have left their home in S. Mauro, with its heart-rending associations, and are settled in Barga. The trouble can be contemplated from a distance, can be reflected upon in its general outlines, and brought into harmony with life as a whole. But the poet’s mind has not taken refuge in the religion of the Church; he is very far from the sentiment of Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_. He finds his comfort in the delicious consciousness of quiet joy known only to those who have suffered without weakness; he finds his strength in the new perspective of life that is obtained by a fixed contemplation of the insignificant place our world holds in the Universe—of the reality of death, which for him ends all things. And this philosophy renders him very human: it focusses his affections upon his fellow mortals. Love, brotherly love, alone can keep our consciences at rest, and fully satisfy our aspirations—such is the earnest cry of this man across the threshold of whose life the hatred of a fellow man stretched the corpse of a murdered father.