Vista sen va tra gli arboscelli e l'erba
Tornata in libertate, e lieta vita;

Ed io dagli amorosi lacci uscita,
Schernendo ogni martir, e pena acerba
Dell'incredibil duol, che in se riserba
Qual ha per troppo amar l'alma smarrita;

Ben avev'io ritolte, ahi stella fiera!
Dal tempio di Ciprigna le mie spoglie
E di lor premio me n'andava altera.

Quando a me Amor; le tue ritrose voglie
Muterò, disse; e femmi prigioniera
Di tua virtù, per rinovar mie doglie."

Which may be Englished as follows, without, it is to be hoped, any very cruel injury to the original:

"As when from her abhorr'd captivity
Fair Philomel hath fled, and proudly takes
Her way through grassy meads and bushy brakes
Restored to joyous life and liberty;

So I, from amorous bonds escaping free,
All torment scorning, and the poignant aches
Of grief untold, which too much loving makes
The doom of such, as love–bewilder'd be,

Had borne (alas! my hapless stars!) away
My garments from the Cyprian Goddess' shrine
Proud of the feat, when Love to me did say,

'I will transform that stubborn will of thine;'
And so he made me captive to thy power,
Renewing all my torments from that hour."

This sonnet is not worse than thousands of other such, which obtained for their fabricators the name and reputation of poets in that age of vaunted intellectual movement; and it is certainly better than the majority of them.

And thus our brilliant Aspasia of the renaissance fluttered from court to court, everywhere received with open arms, everywhere the cynosure of all eyes, everywhere the centre of a knot of poets and littérateurs; and flashing off her sonnets and canzonets right and left; now as offerings to be laid at the feet of some most illustrious duke or duchess, and now in loving or saucy requital of those addressed to her by her brethren of the guild.

But as

"All that's bright must fade,
The brightest still the fleetest,"

the inexorable years too soon brought poor Tullia to that period of "half old–womanhood," as Zilioli so uncourteously terms it, which must have nearly coincided with the date assigned by grave Mazzuchelli to that period of "flourishing," which, it is to be feared, the "half–old woman" would have fixed some five–and–twenty years earlier.

And what was to be done by a brilliant Apollo–chartered Aspasia, when fallen into half old–womanhood?