Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/363

Rh Per adornarti, o man, non tesser fregi Nè di perle nè d' òr. Per tutte l'altre mani, o man, s'apprezza Di Gange il gran tesor: È per te sola, o man, somma ricchezza Il tuo puro candor.

Dunque, leggiadra e bella man di rose, Che di te dir si può? Lodi altere diran lingue amorose, Io le mi tacerò; Perchè la tua bellezza, o man di rose, Il cor mi depredò." In these delightfully fresh and varied strains Chiabrera brought cultured poetry back into closer touch with popular song. The dignified moralising, which is the best thing in his Pindarics, is shown to better advantage in the sermone and epitaffii'.  Of the latter some are familiar to English readers from Wordsworth's translations.

Leopardi and Carducci are at one in assigning the highest place among the writers of classical odes in the seventeenth century, early and late, to Fulvio Testi (1593-1643), the servant of Cesare d'Este, Duke of Modena, and the friend of Tassoni, whose troubled and somewhat intriguing career closed in prison at Modena, but not as was believed by violence. Testi's earliest Rime (1613) were Marinistic, and he was accused by Claretti, speaking for Marino, of plagiarism. But he came under the influence of the patriotic sentiment evoked