“I love thee, O pious ox; a gentle sentiment of strength and peace dost thou infuse into my heart, whether, solemn, monumental, thou lookest out over the free and fertile fields, or whether, bending to the yoke, thou secondest man’s swift work with grave content: he urges thee, he goads thee, and thou answerest with the slow turn of thy patient eyes. Thy breath streams from thy nostril large and damp and black, and thy lowing loses itself in the still air like a joyous hymn; and within the grave sweetness of thine eye, with its green-shadowed depths, the divine verdure of the plain lies reflected broadly and tranquilly.” The conciseness and precision of Carducci’s language give him an extraordinary power of vivid representation of his subject. He “etches, sculptor-like,” as Emerson says of Dante. What can be more vivid, for instance, than the picture of rural life which opens the poem “At the Springs of the Clitunnus”?— “Still do the flocks come down to thee, O Clitunnus, through the moist air of evening, from the mountain that waves with dusky ash-groves murmuring in the wind, and scatters afar its odours of wild sage and thyme; the Umbrian boy still plunges the struggling sheep into thy wave; whilst the babe at the breast of the sunburnt mother, sitting barefoot by the cottage door and singing, turns towards him, and smiles from its fair round face; thoughtfully does the father, his legs clad in goat-skins like the fauns of old, guide the painted ploughshare, and the strength of the beautiful heifers; the beautiful square-breasted heifers their heads erect with mooned horns, sweet-eyed, snowy, that gentle Virgil loved.” Does not one see before one, too, the _Bionda Maria_ (fair-haired Maria) of the “Idillio Maremmano” in the following verses? “How lovely wert thou, O maiden, emerging from the long waving furrows, with fresh-plucked flowers in thy hand, tall and smiling; and under thy glowing brows thou opened’st the blue of thy large deep eyes darting untamed fire. Like the cornflower among the yellowing gold of the corn-ears did the blue of that eye blossom forth among thy tawny hair; and before and around thee the height of summer flamed; the sun laughed, broken by the green branches of the pomegranate, sparkling in red. At thy passing, as at that of a goddess, the gorgeous peacock opened his eyed tail, beholding thee, and sent up to thee a harsh cry.” Of a different kind, but equally effective, is the following description, drawn from a scene in the hall of a thirteenth-century lord. The storm is raging outside; the greyhound bays at the thunder, and stretches out his taper head, with erect ears and restless eyes, towards the marchioness who sits amid her women and maidens; a fire, smelling of the pine forest, blazes in the midst, and, upright before it, Malaspina rises a whole head above the minor barons:—