Side by side with such weak endings should be placed some specimens, no less characteristic, of vigorous and noble lines:[70] Nel cor consiston l'armi, Onde il forte non e chi mai disarmi.
* * * * * Si sta placido e cheto, Ma serba dell'altiero nel mansueto.
If the _Rinaldo_ prefigures Tasso's maturer qualities of style, it is no less conspicuous for the light it throws upon his eminent poetic faculty.

Nothing distinguished him more decidedly from the earlier romantic poets than power over pathetic sentiment conveyed in melodious cadences of oratory.

This emerges in Clarice's monologue on love and honor, that combat of the soul which forms a main feature of the lyrics in _Aminta_ and of Erminia's episode in the _Gerusalemme_.[71] This steeps the whole story of Clizia in a delicious melancholy, foreshadowing the death-scene of Clorinda.[72] This rises in the father's lamentation over his slain Ugone, into the music of a threnody that now recalls Euripides and now reminds us of mediaeval litanies.[73] Censure might be passed upon rhetorical conceits and frigid affectations in these characteristic outpourings of pathetic feeling.

Yet no one can ignore their liquid melody, their transference of emotion through sound into modulated verse.
[Footnote 70: _Rinaldo_, Canto ii.

28, 44.] [Footnote 71: Canto ii.