Zanella's most delicate poetry, comprised in his dainty little volume Astichello ed altre Poesie, not yet included in his works. One of the most beautiful of his poems, The Redbreast (Il Pettirostro), marvellously resembles the idylls of Coleridge, with whose works Zanella betrays his acquaintance. Charming, also, are the sonnets celebrating the various aspects of the local river, the little Astichello, such as this upon the sympathy between man and Nature in time of drought, a "pathetic fallacy," perhaps, but none the worse for that:—
"Shrunk to a thread, the dwindling waters stray
Where Astichello 'neath the poplar flows
With languid tide that scarce avails to sway
The moss that nigh the midmost channel grows,
Sirius the while, ablaze with fiery ray,
Above the unsheltered meadow throbs and glows;
And all the blithe fecundity of May
One withering waste of dismal yellow shows.
The peasant groans despair, and shakes his head;
The friendly stream, munificent no more,
Barred from the brink it lately overran,
Like rustic met with rustic to deplore
The common ill, wails feebly from its bed,
Mingling its music with the plaint of man."
Zanella might have applied to himself the proud humility of Musset, Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre. His modest strain was independent of traditional or contemporary influence. The other poets of the time are more historically significant as representing the decadence of the romantic school. A new development was urgently required to make good its exhausted vitality. The problem was solved much in the same way as that of the renovation of the operatic
