which the following sonnet superadds the charms of fancy:
"The Arno and the Tiber and the Po
This sad lament and heavy plaint of mine
I hear, for solely I my ear incline,
Accompany with music sad and low.
No more Heaven's light on sunny wave doth glow,
No more the dwindled lamps of virtue shine;
Dark western tempests, dank and foul with brine,
Have swept the meads and laid the flowerets low.
The myrtle, Rivers, and the laurel-spray,
Delight and diadem of chosen souls,
And sabred shrines the blast hath borne away:
No more unto the sea your torrent rolls
Exulting, or your Naiades display
Their snowy breasts and shining aureoles."
If other Italian poets felt like Guidiccioni, they shunned to give their sentiments utterance. The chief original poem of Annibale Caro (1507–66), the accomplished translator of Virgil and Longus, and one of the best letter-writers of his age, was a panegyric on the house of Valois—Venite all' ombra dei gran gigli d'oro ("Hither, where spread the golden fleurs-de-lis"). A few years later, with equal genius and equal insensibility to the part that became an Italian, Caro turned to celebrate the Spanish conqueror. Whatever may be thought of the theme of his poem, it is in execution one of the great things of Italian poetry:
"Here the Fifth Charles reposes, at whose name
Eyes of superbest monarchs seek the ground,
Whom Story's tongue and Honour's trump resound,
Quelling all loudest blasts of meaner fame.
How hosts and legioned chiefs he overcame,
Kings, but for him invincible, discrowned,
Swayed realms beyond Imagination's bound,
And his own mightier soul did rule and tame—
