O friendly soil, Soil that doth hold my love in thine embrace, Soon as for me shall end life's war and toil Beneath thy sod I too would have a place; Where my love is, there do I long to be, Where now my heart is buried far from me-- Yes, where my love is gone I long to go, Robbed of my heart I bear too deep a woe.
This stringer of pretty conceits fails to convince us that he is very much in earnest in his wish to die. Speaking in the sincerity of prose, the Tuscan says, "Ogni cosa è meglio che la morte." He does not believe in the nothingness of life. In his worst troubles he still feels that all his faculties, all his senses, are made for pleasure. Death is to him the affair of a not cheerful religious ceremony--a cross borne before a black draped bier, and bells tolling dolefully.
I hear Death's step, I see him at my side, I feel his bony fingers clasp me round; I see the church's door is open wide, And for the dead I hear the knell resound. I see the cross and the black pall outspread; Love, thou dost lead me whither lie the dead! I see the cross, the winding-sheet I see; Love, to the graveyard thou art leading me!
Going further south, a stage further is reached in crude externality of vision. People of the South are the only born realists. To them that comes natural which in others is either affectation or the fruits of what the French call _l'amour du laid_--a morbid love of the hideous, such as marred the fine genius of Baudelaire. At Naples death is a matter of corruption naked in the sunlight. When the Neapolitan takes his mandoline amongst the tombs he unveils their sorry secrets, not because he gloats over them, but because the habit of a reserve of speech is entirely undeveloped in him. He dares to sing thus of his lost love--
Her lattice ever lit no light displays. My Nella! can it be that you are ill? Her sister from the window looks and says: "Your Nella in the grave lies cold and still. Ofttimes she wept to waste her life unwed, And now, poor child, she sleeps beside the dead." Go to the church and lift the winding-sheet, Gaze on my Nella's face--how changed, alas! See 'twixt those lips whence issued flowers so sweet Now loathsome worms (ah! piteous sight!) do pass. Priest, let it be your care, and promise me, That evermore her lamp shall lighted be.