The waves they whisper
In Luna’s glance,
Entrancing music
For the nixies’ dance. 
They beckon, smiling,
And wavewise woo,
While softly plashing:—­
“Do thou love, too!”

In blossoming lindens
Doves fondly rear
Their tender fledglings
From year to year. 
With never a pausing,
They bill and coo,
And twitter gently:—­
“Do thou love, too!”

     INVITATION

     How long wilt stand outside and cower? 
       Come straight within, beloved guest. 
     The winds are fierce this wintry hour: 
       Come, stay awhile with me and rest. 
     You wander begging shelter vainly
       A weary time from door to door;
     I see what you have suffered plainly: 
       Come, rest with me and stray no more!

     And nestle by me, trusting-hearted;
       Lay in my loving hands your head: 
     Then back shall come your peace departed,
       Through the world’s baseness long since fled;
     And deep from out your heart upspringing,
     Love’s downy wings will soar to view,
       The darling smiles like magic bringing
     Around your gloomy lips anew.

     Come, rest:  myself will here detain you,
       So long as pulse of mine shall beat;
     Nor shall my heart grow cold and pain you,
       Till carried to your last retreat. 
     You gaze at me in doubting fashion,
       Before the offered rapture dumb;
     Tears and still tears your sole expression: 
       Bedew my bosom with them—­come!

EDMONDO DE AMICIS

(1846-)

In 1869, ‘Vita Militare’ (Military Life), a collection of short stories, was perhaps the most popular Italian volume of the year.  Read alike in court and cottage, it was everywhere discussed and enthusiastically praised.  Its prime quality was that quivering sympathy which insures some success to any imaginative work, however crudely written.  But these sketches of all the grim and amusing phases of Italian soldier life are drawn with an exquisite precision.  The reader feels the breathless discouragement of the tired soldiers when new dusty vistas are revealed by a sudden turn in the road (’A Midsummer March’); understands the strong silent love between officer and orderly, suppressed by military etiquette (’The Orderly’); smiles with the soldiers at the pretty runaway boy, idol of the regiment (’The Son of the Regiment’); pities the humiliations of the conscript novice (’The Conscript’); thrills with the proud sorrow of the old man whose son’s colonel tells the story of his heroic death (’Dead on the Field of Battle’).  “When I had finished reading it,” said an Italian workman, “I would gladly have pressed the hand of the first soldier whom I happened to meet.”  The author was only twenty-three, and has since given the world many delightful volumes, but nothing finer.