recent poems, the Odi Navali (1893), though patriotic in theme, appear tame and artificial in comparison with earlier work. The epilogue to the Poema Paradisiaco, nevertheless, argues progress in the right direction, and leaves room to hope that D'Annunzio may yet take rank not merely with poets eminent for melody, fancy, and imagination, but with those who have counted among the shaping forces of their time.
The general impression of D'Annunzio's poetry is one of dazzling splendour and intoxicating perfume. The poet seems determined to leave no sense ungratified, and not to omit a hue, an odour. Or a cadence that can by any possibility be pressed into his service. It says much for the genuineness of his poetical faculty that he should actually be able to perform this without falling into extravagance; but although his lavish luxury of phrase and description is kept within the limits of taste, the too uniform splendour satiates and fatigues. Mr. Greene's translations in his Italian Lyrists convey a very good notion of D'Annunzio's most usual manner. The following sonnet may serve as a specimen:—
"Beneath the white full-moon the murmuring seas
Send songs of love across the pine-tree glade;
The moonlight filtering through the dome-topped trees
Fills with weird light the vast and secret shade;
Afresh salt perfume on the Illyrian breeze
From sea-weeds on the rock is hither swayed,
While my sad heart, worn out and ill at ease,
A wild poetic longing doth invade.
But now more joyous still the love-songs flow
O'er waves of silver sea; from pine to pine
A sweet name echoes in the winds that blow;
And, hovering through yon spaces diamantine,
A phantom fair with silent flight and slow,
Smiles on me from its great-orbed eyes divine."
