Or pile his back with every stone he can,
Or counsel from each word to seek to find,
Or take his walks abroad with Dick and Dan:
Not without cause I'm moved to speak my mind.

The second condemns those men of light impulse who, as Dante put it,
discoursing on the same theme, 'subject reason to inclination.'[1]

What time desire hath o'er the soul such sway
That reason finds nor place nor puissance here,
Men oft do laugh at what should claim a tear,
And over grievous dole are seeming gay.
He sure would travel far from sense astray
Who should take frigid ice for fire; and near
Unto this plight are those who make glad cheer
For what should rather cause their soul dismay.
But more at heart might he feel heavy pain
Who made his reason subject to mere will,
And followed wandering impulse without rein;
Seeing no lordship is so rich as still
One's upright self unswerving to sustain,
To follow worth, to flee things vain and ill.

The sonnets translated by me in this essay, taken together with
those already published by Mr. Rossetti, put the English reader in
possession of all that passes for the work of Folgore da San
Gemignano.

[1] The line in Dante runs:

'Che la ragion sommettono al talento.'

In Folgore's sonnet we read:

'Chi sommette rason a volontade.'

On the supposition that Folgore wrote in the second decade
of the fourteenth century, it is not impossible that he
may have had knowledge of this line from the fifth canto
of the _Inferno_.

Since these words were written, England has lost the poet-painter,
to complete whose work upon the sonnet-writer of mediaeval Siena I
attempted the translations in this essay. One who has trodden the
same path as Rossetti, at however a noticeable interval, and has
attempted to present in English verse the works of great Italian
singers, doing inadequately for Michelangelo and Campanella what he
did supremely well for Dante, may here perhaps be allowed to lay the
tribute of reverent recognition at his tomb.

_THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS_

What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so
truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep
the feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I
stood one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence. A priest
was thundering from the pulpit against French scepticis