the trivial subject
he had chosen, and triumphantly presented to the world the _spolia
opima_ of scholarship and taste. What mattered it that the theme was
slight? The art was perfect, the result splendid. One canto of 125
stanzas describes the youth of Giuliano, who sought to pass his life
among the woods, a hunter dead to love, but who was doomed to be
ensnared by Cupid. The chase, the beauty of Simonetta, the palace of
Venus, these are the three subjects of a book as long as the first
Iliad. The second canto begins with dreams and prophecies of glory to
be won by Giuliano in the tournament. But it stops abruptly. The
tragic catastrophe of the Pazzi Conjuration cut short Poliziano's
panegyric by the murder of his hero. Meanwhile the poet had achieved
his purpose. His torso presented to Italy a model of style, a piece of
written art adequate to the great painting of the Renaissance period,
a double star of poetry which blent the splendours of the ancient and
the modern world. To render into worthy English the harmonies of
Poliziano is a difficult task. Yet this must be attempted if an
English reader is to gain any notion of the scope and substance of the
Italian poet's art. In the first part of the poem we are placed, as it
were, at the mid point between the 'Hippolytus' of Euripides and
Shakspere's 'Venus and Adonis.' The cold hunter Giuliano is to see
Simonetta, and seeing, is to love her. This is how he first discovers
the triumphant beauty:[33]

White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathed folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride:

The wild wood smiled; the thicket where he found her,
To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.

After three stanzas of this sort, in which the poet's style is more
apparent than the object he describes, occurs this charming picture:--

Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
Of every flower that in the meadow was,
Or on her robe of many hues displayed;
But when she saw the youth before her pass,
Raising her timid head awhile she stayed;
Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
And stood, lap-full of flowers, in loveliness.

Then through the dewy field with footstep slow
The lingering maid