Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/408

390 Zanella's most delicate poetry, comprised in his dainty little volume Astichello ed altre Poesie, not yet included in his works. One of the most beautiful of his poems, The Redbreast (Il Pettirostro), marvellously resembles the idylls of Coleridge, with whose works Zanella betrays his acquaintance. Charming, also, are the sonnets celebrating the various aspects of the local river, the little Astichello, such as this upon the sympathy between man and Nature in time of drought, a "pathetic fallacy," perhaps, but none the worse for that:—

Zanella might have applied to himself the proud humility of Musset, Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre. His modest strain was independent of traditional or contemporary influence. The other poets of the time are more historically significant as representing the decadence of the romantic school. A new development was urgently required to make good its exhausted vitality. The problem was solved much in the same way as that of the renovation of the operatic