Here Jove is made a swan, a golden shower,
    Or seems a serpent, or a shepherd-swain,
  To work his amorous will in secret hour;
    Here, like an eagle, soars he o’er the plain,
  Love-led, and bears his Ganymede, the flower
    Of beauty, mid celestial peers to reign;
  The boy with cypress hath his fair locks crowned,
  Naked, with ivy wreathed his waist around.

  STANZAS 110—­112.

  Lo! here again fair Ariadne lies,
    And to the deaf winds of false Theseus plains. 
  And of the air and slumber’s treacheries;
    Trembling with fear even as a reed that strain. 
  And quivers by the mere ’neath breezy skies: 
    Her very speechless attitude complains—­
  No beast there is so cruel as thou art,
  No beast less loyal to my broken heart.

  Throned on a car, with ivy crowned and vine,
    Rides Bacchus, by two champing tigers driven: 
  Around him on the sand deep-soaked with brine
    Satyrs and Bacchantes rush; the skies are riven
  With shouts and laughter; Fauns quaff bubbling wine
    From horns and cymbals; Nymphs, to madness driven,
  Trip, skip, and stumble; mixed in wild enlacements,
  Laughing they roll or meet for glad embracements.

  Upon his ass Silenus, never sated,
    With thick, black veins, wherethrough the must is soaking,
  Nods his dull forehead with deep sleep belated;
    His eyes are wine-inflamed, and red, and smoking: 
  Bold Maenads goad the ass so sorely weighted,
    With stinging thyrsi; he sways feebly poking
  The mane with bloated fingers; Fauns behind him,
  E’en as he falls, upon the crupper bind him.

We almost seem to be looking at the frescoes in some Trasteverine palace, or at the canvas of one of the sensual Genoese painters.  The description of the garden of Venus has the charm of somewhat artificial elegance, the exotic grace of style, which attracts us in the earlier Renaissance work:—­

  The leafy tresses of that timeless garden
    Nor fragile brine nor fresh snow dares to whiten;
  Frore winter never comes the rills to harden,
    Nor winds the tender shrubs and herbs to frighten;
  Glad Spring is always here, a laughing warden;
    Nor do the seasons wane, but ever brighten;
  Here to the breeze young May, her curls unbinding,
  With thousand flowers her wreath is ever winding.

Indeed it may be said with truth that Poliziano’s most eminent faculty as a descriptive poet corresponded exactly to the genius of the painters of his day.  To produce pictures radiant with Renaissance colouring, and vigorous with Renaissance passion, was the function of his art, not to express profound thought or dramatic situations.  This remark might be extended with justice to Ariosto, and Tasso, and Boiardo.  The great narrative poets of the Renaissance in Italy were not dramatists; nor were their poems epics:  their forte lay in the inexhaustible variety and beauty of their pictures.