"
The poem ends with the prophecy that poetry, after time destroys
the sepulchers, shall preserve the memories of the great and the
unhappy, and invokes the shades of Greece and Troy to give an
illusion of sublimity to the close. The poet doubts if there be
any comfort to the dead in monumental stones, but declares that
they keep memories alive, and concludes that only those who leave
no love behind should have little joy of their funeral urns. He
blames the promiscuous burial of the good and bad, the great and
base; he dwells on the beauty of the ancient cemeteries and the
pathetic charm of English churchyards. The poem of _I Sepolcri_
has peculiar beauties, yet it does not seem to me the grand work
which the Italians have esteemed it; though it has the pensive
charm which attaches to all elegiac verse. De Sanctis attaches
a great political and moral value to it. "The revolution, in the
horror of its excesses, was passing. More temperate ideas
prevailed; the need of a moral and religious restoration was felt.
Foscolo's poem touched these chords ... which vibrated in all
hearts."
The tragedies of Foscolo are little read, and his unfinished but
faithful translation of Homer did not have the success which met
the facile paraphrase of Monti.
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