THREE POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO JACOPONE DA TODI.

Though judging it impossible to preserve the least part of Jacopone's charm in a translation, I have made versions of the Christmas Carol, the Passion Poem, and the Hymn of Divine Love, alluded to in chapter v., pp. 291-298. The metrical structure of the first is confused in the original; but I have adopted a stanza which follows the scheme pretty closely, and reproduces the exact number of the lines. In the second I have forced myself to repeat the same rhyme at the close of each of the thirty-four strophes, which in the Italian has a very fine effect—the sound being ato. No English equivalent can do it justice. The third poem I admit to be really untranslatable. The recurrences of strong voweled endings in ore, are, ezza, ate cannot be imitated.