For those fresh joys that once were mine,
          On this green fount of joy and mirth,
          The ever young and glorious earth;
          Then, helpless, shall I call to mind
          Thoughts of the flower-scented wind,
          The dew, the gentle rain at night,
          The wonder-working snow and white,
          The song of birds, the water’s fall,
          The sun that maketh bliss of all;
          Yea, this our toil and victory,
          The tyrannous and conquered sea.

The Sirens: 
Ah, will ye go, and whither then
Will ye go from us, soon to die,
To fill your threescore years and ten
With many an unnamed misery?

And this the wretchedest of all,
That when upon your lonely eyes
The last faint heaviness shall fall,
Ye shall bethink you of our cries. 
Come back, nor, grown old, seek in vain
To hear us sing across the sea;
Come back, come back, come back again,
Come back, O fearful Minyae!

Orpheus: 
Ah, once again, ah, once again,
The black prow plunges through the sea;
Nor yet shall all your toil be vain,
Nor ye forget, O Minyae!

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO

(1474-1533)

BY L. OSCAR KUHNS

Among the smaller principalities of Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, none was more brilliant than the court of Ferrara, and none more intimately connected with the literature of the times.  Here, on September 8th, 1474, was born Ludovico Ariosto, the great poet of the Renaissance.  Here, like Boiardo before him and Tasso after him, he lived and wrote; and it was to the family of Este that he dedicated that poem in which are seen, as in a mirror, the gay life, the intellectual brilliancy, and the sensuous love for beauty which mark the age.  At seventeen he began the study of the law, which he soon abandoned for the charms of letters.  Most of his life was passed in the service first of Cardinal d’Este, and afterward of the Duke of Ferrara.  But the courtier never overcame the poet, who is said to have begun the famous ‘Orlando Furioso’ at the age of thirty, and never to have ceased the effort to improve it.

The literary activity of Ariosto showed itself in the composition of comedies and satires, as well as in that of his immortal epic.  The comedies were written for the court theatre of Ferrara, to which he seems to have had some such relation as that of Goethe to the theatre at Weimar.  The later comedies are much better than the early ones, which are but little more than translations from Plautus and Terence.  In general, however, the efforts of Ariosto in this direction are far less important than the ‘Orlando’ or the ‘Satires.’  At the first appearance of his plays they were enormously successful, and the poet was hailed as a great dramatic genius.  But these comedies are interesting to-day chiefly from the fact that Ariosto was one of the very first of the writers of modern comedy, and was the leader of that movement in Italy and France which prepared the way for Moliere.