verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and the
peasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amoebaean
strains. The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, and
the children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villages
in spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead.
Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and
sorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its
inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in
picturesque and fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted that
there is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of
art, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by
too constant use; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognize in
the Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together one
strong dominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity. Indeed, it is
only in the more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can find
any parallel to the Corsican _voceri_ with their shrill intensity of
passion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate. And yet, ardent as the
feeling is, the form is nearly always beautiful. Now and then, in the
poems of the extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism,
but, as a rule, the sense of beauty prevails.

Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and loveliness
of lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by which
mirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even where
there are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born of
fancy not of affectation. Herrick himself might have envied that
wonderful love-song of Provence:

If thou wilt be the falling dew
And fall on me alway,
Then I will be the white, white rose
On yonder thorny spray.
If thou wilt be the white, white rose
On yonder thorny spray,
Then I will be the honey-bee
And kiss thee all the day.

If thou wilt be the honey-bee
And kiss me all the day,
Then I will be in yonder heaven
The star of brightest ray.
If thou wilt be in yonder heaven
The star of brightest ray,
Then I will be the dawn, and we
Shall meet at break of day.

How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings her
babe to sleep!

Gold and pearls my vessel lad