Page:Carducci - Poems of Italy.djvu/26

 no conception. Because the originals are unrhymed, and because of a certain gravity and stateliness in their metre, I have uniformly made our English blank verse the instrument of my renderings. To do so, I am well aware, is to incur the risk of monotony; but the attempt to reproduce with unskilled touch the complex music of the master would, I believe, be even more misleading in its result. In the single case of "Miramar," I have held to the original form to the extent of preserving the short line at the close of every stanza.

It may be that the accusation of sameness will be brought against the substance as well as the structure of the following poems. Carducci's genius has an extraordinarily wide range; it is satirical, patriotic, classical, but its most characteristic and subtile quality is its impressionism—its power of creating atmosphere through the medium of words. This quality is apparent to a greater or less degree in all our poet's work, but chiefly so in such descriptive poems as those which are here selected. "Miramar," "Rome," "Before the Old Castle of Verona," are not specific word-pictures, but rather poetic evocations of the significance latent

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