your
beauty and good parts, when men (growing enamored of you by them)
solicite you with their best and humblest services. Remember then this
disdainfull Gentlewoman, but more especially her, who being the death
of so kinde a Lover, was therefore condemned to perpetuall punishment,
and he made the minister thereof, whom she had cast off with coy
disdaine, from which I wish your minds to be as free, as mine is ready
to do you any acceptable service."[1]

[Footnote 1: This translation is from the English version of _The
Decameron_, first published in 1620, but in 1569 had appeared _A
Notable Historye of Nastagto and Traversan_, or rhymed version of
Boccaccio's tale, by C.T., usually supposed to be Christopher Tye the
musician. Dryden used this story for his fable _Theodore and Honoria_.
It is curious to note that Anita, Garibaldi's wife, was actually
hunted to death here in the Pineta by the Austrians.]

To Dante and to Boccaccio belong of right morning and noon in the
Pineta; but the evening is ours for it belongs to Byron:

"Sweet hour of twilight' in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er,
To where the last Caesarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest I which Boccaccio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee;

"The shrill cicalas, people of the pine,
Making their summer lives one ceaseless song,
Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine,
And vesper bells that rose the boughs along,
The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line,
His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng
Which learn'd from this example not to fly
From a true lover--shadow'd my mind's eye

"Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day
When they from their sweet friends are torn apart.
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way
As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay,
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns!"

That "sweet hour of twilight" in the Pineta is the most precious hour
of the day, when far off across the marsh softly, softly comes the Ave
Maria....

"_O tu rinnovellata
itala gente da le molte vite
rendi la voce

"de ta preghiera, la campana squilli
ammonitrice, il campanil riso