d virtue dulled by voluptuous delights. It remained for Tasso to give
that magic of the senses vocal utterance. From the myrtle groves of
Orontes, from the spell-bound summer amid snows upon the mountains of
the Fortunate Isle, these lyrics with their penetrative sweetness, their
lingering regret, pass into the silence of the soul. It is eminently
characteristic of Tasso's mood and age that the melody of both these
honeyed songs should thrill with sadness. Nature is at war with honor;
youth passes like a flower away; therefore let us love and yield our
hearts to pleasure while we can. _Sehnsucht_, the soul of modern
sentiment, the inner core of modern music, makes its entrance into the
sphere of art with these two hymns. The division of the mind, wavering
between natural impulse and acquired morality, gives the tone of
melancholy to the one chant. In the other, the invitation to
self-abandonment is mingled with a forecast of old age and death. Only
Catullus, in his song to Lesbia, among the ancients touched this note;
only Villon, perhaps, in his Ballade of Dead Ladies, touched it among
the moderns before Tasso. But it has gone on sounding ever since through
centuries which have enjoyed the luxury of grief in music.

If Tancredi be the real hero of the _Gerusalemme_, Armida is the
heroine. The action of the epic follows her movements. She combines the
parts of Angelica and Alcina in one that is original and novel. A
sorceress, deputed by the powers of hell to defeat the arms of the
crusaders, Armida falls herself in love with a Christian champion. Love
changes her from a beautiful white witch into a woman.[76] When she
meets Rinaldo in the battle, she discharges all her arrows vainly at the
man who has deserted her. One by one, they fly and fall; and as they
wing their flight, Love wounds her own heart with his shafts:

Scocca I' arco piu volte, e non fa piaga
E, mentre ella saetta, amor lei piaga (xx. 65).

Then she turns to die in solitude. Rinaldo follows, and stays her in the
suicidal act. Despised and rejected as she is, she cannot hate him. The
man she had entangled in her wiles has conquered and subdued her nature.
To the now repentant minister of hell he proposes baptism; and Armida
consents:

Si parla, e prega; e i preghi bagna e scalda
Or di lagrime rare, or di sospiri:
Onde, siccome suol nevosa falda
Dov'arde il sole, o tepid' aura spiri,
Cosi l'ira che in lei parea si salda,