E poco e il male in cui poco e l’inganno.  Ti puoi guardar:

but I am not sure that I am justified in the sense I put upon the verb guardarsi.

XXXV.  A similar arraignment of impostors, comparing perfidious priests with the foulest literary scoundrel of the age, Pietro Aretino.  The first terzet in the original is obscure.

XXXVI.  I do not understand the allusion in the last line.  The whole sonnet is directed against hypocritical priests.

XXXVII., XXXVIII., XXXIX.  A commentary on the first clauses of the Lord’s Prayer.  Campanella tells the Italians they have no right to call themselves men, the children of God in heaven, while they bow to tyrants worse than beasts, and believe the lying priests who call that adulation loyalty.  If they free their souls from this vile servitude, they may then pray with hopeful heart for the coming upon earth of God’s kingdom, which shall satisfy poets, philosophers, and prophets with more than they had dreamed.  It will be noticed that the rhymes are carried from sonnet to sonnet; so that the three form one poem, described by Adami as sonetto trigemino.  In XXXVII., 13, I have corrected cenno into senno.  In XXXIX., 1, I have ventured to render con ogni istanza by with every hour that flies, though istanza is not istante.

XL., XLL, XLII.  These three sonnets, though not linked by rhymes, form a series, predicting the speedy overthrow of tyrants, sophists, hypocrites—­Campanella’s natural enemies—­and the coming of a better age for human society.  They were probably written early, when his heart was still hot with the hopes of a new reign of right and reason, which even he might help to inaugurate.  The eagle, bear, lion, crow, fox, wolf, etc., are the evil principalities and powers of earth.  No.  XL., line 9:  the giants are, I think, those lawless, selfish, anti-social forces idealised by Machiavelli in his Principe, as Campanella read that treatise—­the strong men and mighty ones of an impious and godless world.  No.  XLL, line 4:  concerning Taida, Sinon, Giuda, ed Omero, Adami says:  ’These are the four evangelists of the dark age of Abaddon.’  Thais is a symbol of lechery; Sinon of fraud; Judas of treason; Homer of lying fiction.  So at least I read the allegory.  No.  XLII., lines 9-14 are noticeable, since they set forth Campanella’s philosophical or evangelical communism, for a detailed exposition of which see the Civitas Solis.

XLIII.  Invited to write a comedy—­and it will be here remembered that Giordano Bruno had composed Il Candelaio—­Campanella replied with this impassioned outburst of belief in the approaching end of the world.  It belongs probably to his early manhood.

XLIV., XLV.  Adami heads these two sonnets with this title:  Sopra i colori delle vesti.  It is a fact that under the Spanish tyranny black clothes were almost universally adopted by the Italians, as may be seen in the picture galleries of Florence and Genoa.  Campanella uses this fashion as a symbol of the internal gloom and melancholy in which the nation was sunk by vice upon the eve of the new age he confidently looked for.