His power of blending historical scenes with descriptive poetry is also to be found in the poem entitled “At the Springs of the Clitunnus.” Umbrians, Tuscans, Romans, Carthaginians pass before the reader; then Catholicism appears with its black-robed priests, driving out ancient gods and tillage, but ousted in its turn by new developments of the human mind. “Before us the train, steaming and panting after new industries, whistles as it rushes along.” Strange as it may seem, all this history does not swamp the poetry, which is of the most purely idyllic character throughout. We must not leave the subject of Carducci’s sympathy with nature without mentioning the pretty little dialogue between the poet and the great alley of cypress-trees at which he used to fling stones, and among which he used to go bird-nesting in his boyish days. The cypresses run to meet him like a double row of young giants, welcome him and beg him to remain with them, offering him the pastimes of years gone by. The poet answers that he cannot stop; he has grown to be a celebrity now, he reads Greek and Latin, writes and writes, is no longer an urchin, and, as to stones, he no longer throws them, especially at plants. A murmur runs through the doubting summits, the rosy light of the setting sun shines athwart the dark cypress green with a pitying smile, sun and trees seem to feel compassion for him, and the murmur embodies itself in words. The winds have told the poet’s old companions of his eternal unrest, of his eternal brooding over vexed questions which can never be settled. Let him come back to his old haunts, to the blue sea, the smile of the setting sun, the flights of birds, the chirping of the sparrows, the choruses which pass eternally between earth and sky. So only will he lay the evil spectres which rise from the black depths of man’s thought-beaten heart, as putrid flames rise before one walking in a cemetery. The poet will not stop, yet, as the train whirls him back to the problems of the world, he looks back at the quiet graveyard to which they lead up and where his grandmother lies, wondering whether they may not be right, and whether what he has sought for morning and evening so many years in vain, may not after all be hidden there. Yet as the train rushes on, the colts run racing beside it; and it is only a donkey, feeding on a thistle, that stands stolidly gazing on the busy scene before him. A pilgrim to this cypress alley relates that its owner, Count Walfredo della Gherardesca, refuses to cut down the trees, many of which have suffered much from storms, and replant the alley. “Carducci loves them,” he said, “and therefore I respect them. Those that have suffered I shall replace little by little by young plants, and thus the alley will preserve its true and now celebrated appearance.” As an expression of pure nature-sense, we may still quote, perhaps, the sonnet entitled “The Ox”:—