My heart is wasted like the melting snow,
And hope, that comforter, is nearly dead;
Seeing these wings have been so long outspread,
And yet so sluggish is my flight and low.
But if I therefore should complain and weep—
If chide with love, or fortune, or the fair—
No cause I have; myself must bear it all,
Who, like a man 'mid trifles lulled to sleep,
With death beside me, feed on empty air,
Nor think how soon this mouldering garb must fall."
Among Sannazaro's contemporaries, a little too early to have imbibed the full spirit of the Petrarchan revival, may be especially named Antonio Tebaldeo (1463–1537), an admired poet who survived his reputation; Serafino dell' Aquila, imitated by Wyat, whose Neapolitan vehemence betrayed his lively talent into bombast; Antonio Cammelli, the political laureate of the Ferrarese court; Antonello Petrucci, who wrote as Damocles banqueted, with the headsman's axe suspended over him; Notturno Neapolitano; and Filosseno, chiefly remarkable for the undisguised gallantry of his sonnets addressed to Lucrezia Borgia.
Bembo was a model man of letters, to whom in this capacity the Italian language and Italian culture are infinitely beholden. As a poet he is perhaps best characterised by the forty drawers through which he is said to have successively passed his sonnets, making some alteration for the better in every one of them. If there had been any originality in any of them, this would hardly have survived the twentieth drawer, but there never had been, and since the polish was always meant to be the merit, there hardly could be too much polishing. Bembo's poetry at all events serves to refute the heresy which identifies genius with industry; and if we admit with
