Flower Songs, Italian

( Fra Lippo Lippi. ) The flower songs in this poem are of the description known as the stornello . This is not to be confounded with the rispetto , which consists of a stanza of inter-rhyming lines, ranging from six to ten in number. “The Luccan and Umbrian stornello is much shorter, consisting indeed of a hemistich having some natural object which suggests the motive of the little poem. The nearest approach to the Italian stornello appears to be, not the rispetto , but the Welsh triban ” ( Encyc. Brit. , xix. 272). See also notes to Fra Lippo Lippi .