And where it does so, as, for instance, in the fine Ode to
Venus, by Andrea Navagero, it is easy to detect a simple paraphrase of
ancient masterpieces. Some of the ode-writers take the saints for their
subject, and invoke them in verses tastefully modelled after the
pattern of analogous odes of Horace and Catullus. This is the manner of
Navagero, in the Ode to the Archangel Gabriel, and particularly of
Sannazaro, who goes still further in his appropriation of pagan
sentiment. He celebrates above all his patron saint, whose chapel was
attached to his lovely villa on the shores of Posilippo, 'there where
the waves of the sea drink up the stream from the rocks, and surge
against the walls of the little sanctuary.' His delight is in the
annual feast of St. Nazzaro, and the branches and garlands with which
t_e chapel is hung on this day seem to him like sacrificial gifts. Full
of sorrow, and far off in exile, at St. Nazaire, on the banks of the
Loire, with the banished Federigo of Aragon, he brings wreaths of box
and oak leaves to his patron saint on the same anniversary, thinking of
former years, when all the youth of Posilippo used to come forth to
greet him on flower-hung boats, and praying that he may return home.
Perhaps the most deceptive likeness to the classical style is borne by
a class of poems in elegiacs or hexameters, whose subject ranges from
elegy, strictly so called, to epigram.
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