Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/38

20 Yet thou, ere on their errand these proceed,
 * If Love consent, I pray recall and cite
 * My spirits all astray dispersed in flight,

That so my songs be bold to sue and plead, Then, hast thou sight of ladies' loveliness,
 * Thither accede, for I would harm thee there,
 * And audience with humility entreat;

And charge my envoys, kneeling at their feet,
 * Their Lord and his desirings to declare:
 * Hear them, sweet Ladies, for their humbleness."

Several other good poets, such as Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, and Gianni Alfani, would deserve notice in a more elaborate history. They all wrought in the spirit of Cavalcanti and Dante himself, spiritualising the earthly passion of the troubadours, and endowing the ladies of their songs with such superhuman perfections as to incur the risk of appearing mere types of ideal virtue. We must, however, pass to a different order of poetry, the gay and satirical. Here Folgore di San Geminiano is the leading figure. His political sonnets are very forcible; but he is better known for two sets of sonnets on the pleasures of the months and the days of the week, celebrating, not without an undercurrent of satire, the luxurious extravagance of a set of wild young men at Siena, who, another poet informs us, reduced themselves to beggary thereby. Another humorous poet, justly defined by Rossetti as the scamp of the Dante circle, is Cecco Angioleri, who is irreverent enough to call Dante himself a pinchbeck florin, and whose favourite theme is his quarrels with his parents:

My mother don't do much because she can't,
 * But I may count it just as good as done,

Knowing the way and not the will's her want.
 * To-day I tried a kiss with her—just one—