ore piteous than this prayer? (p. 809):--

Love, if you love me, delve a tomb,
And lay me there the earth beneath;
After a year, come see my bones,
And make them dice to play therewith.
But when you're tired of that game,
Then throw those dice into the flame;
But when you're tired of gaming free,
Then throw those dice into the sea.

The simpler expression of sorrow to the death is, as usual, more
impressive. A girl speaks thus within sight of the grave (p. 808):--

Yes, I shall die: what wilt thou gain?
The cross before my bier will go;
And thou wilt hear the bells complain,
The _Misereres_ loud and low.
Midmost the church thou'lt see me lie
With folded hands and frozen eye;
Then say at last, I do repent!--
Nought else remains when fires are spent.

Here is a rustic Oenone (p. 307):--

Fell death, that fliest fraught with woe!
Thy gloomy snares the world ensphere:
Where no man calls, thou lov'st to go;
But when we call, thou wilt not hear.
Fell death, false death of treachery,
Thou makest all content but me.

Another is less reproachful, but scarcely less sad (p. 308):--

Strew me with blossoms when I die,
Nor lay me 'neath the earth below;
Beyond those walls, there let me lie,
Where oftentimes we used to go.
There lay me to the wind and rain;
Dying for you, I feel no pain:
There lay me to the sun above;
Dying for you, I die of love.

Yet another of these pitiful love-wailings displays much poetry of
expression (p. 271):--

I dug the sea, and delved the barren sand:
I wrote with dust and gave it to the wind:
Of melting snow, false Love, was made thy band,
Which suddenly the day's bright beams unbind.
Now am I ware, and know my own mistake--
How false are all the promises you make;
Now am I ware, and know the fact, ah me!
That who confides in you, deceived will be.

It would scarcely be well to pause upon these very doleful ditties.
Take, then, the following little serenade, in which the lover on his
way to visit his mistress has unconsciously fallen on the same thought
as Bion (p. 85):--

Yestreen I went my love to greet,
By yonder village path below:
Night in a coppice found my feet;
I called the moon her light to show--
O moon, who needs no flame to fire thy face,
Look forth and lend me light a little space!

Enough has been quoted to illustrate the character of the Tuscan
popular poetry.