The Canti
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Translated by A. S. Kline © 2003 All Rights Reserved
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Translator’s Note.
The poems of the Canti below are complete but not in their originally published order. I have taken the liberty of re-arranging them into four groups, Personal (Poems 1-11), Philosophical (12-24), ‘Romantic’ (25-34), and Political (35-41). These categories are not exact, as Leopardi frequently blends elements together in the one poem, but they may help the reader, as they helped me, to adjust to his variations in style. The original published position of each poem is given in Roman numerals in the brackets following the poem’s title.
Contents
3. The Evening Of The Holiday (XIII)
5. Saturday Night In The Village (XXV)
7. Night-Song Of A Wandering Shepherd of Asia (XXIII)
14. The Calm After The Storm (XXIV)
17. Bas-Relief On An Ancient Tomb (XXX)
18. On A Lovely Lady’s Image (XXX1)
19. To Spring (or Of The Ancient Myths) (VII)
20. Hymn To The Patriarchs (VIII)
22. To Count Carlo Pepoli (XIX)
23. Fragment (From Simonides I: XL)
24. Fragment (From Simonides II:XLI)
29. The Re-awakening (Il Risorgimento: XX)
32. Fragment (Alcetas and Melissus: XXXVII)
33. Fragment (Separation: XXXVIII)
34. Fragment (Turned to Stone: XXXIX)
36. On the Proposed Dante Monument in Florence (II)
38. For The Marriage of His Sister Paolina (IV)
39. To A Winner In The Games (V)
41. Palinode To Marchese Gino Capponi (XXXII)
those moments, in your mortal life,
when beauty still shone
in your sidelong, laughing eyes,
and you, light and thoughtful,
leapt beyond girlhood’s limits?
The quiet rooms and the streets
around you, sounded
to your endless singing,
when you sat, happily content,
intent on that woman’s work,
the vague future, arriving alive in your mind.
It was the scented May, and that’s how
you spent your day.
I would leave my intoxicating studies,
and the turned-down pages,
where my young life,
the best of me, was left,
and from the balcony of my father’s house
strain to catch the sound of your voice,
and your hand, quick,
running over the loom.
I’d look at the serene sky,
the gold lit gardens and paths:
this side the mountains, that side the far-off sea.
And human tongue cannot say
what I felt then.
What sweet thoughts,
what hope, what hearts, O my Silvia!
How all human life and fate
appeared to us then!
When I recall that hope
such feelings pain me,
harsh, disconsolate,
I brood on my own destiny.
Oh Nature, Nature
why do you not give now
what you promised then? Why
do you so deceive your children?
Attacked, and conquered, by secret disease,
you died, my tenderest one, and did not see
your years flower, or feel your heart moved,
by sweet praise of your black hair
your shy, loving looks.
No friends talked with you,
on holidays, about love.
My sweet hopes died also
little by little: to me too
Fate has denied those years.
Oh, how you’ve passed me by,
dear friend of my new life,
my saddened hope!
Is this the world, the dreams,
the loves, events, delights,
we spoke about so much together?
Is this our human life?
At the advance of Truth
you fell, unhappy one,
and from the distance,
with your hand you pointed
towards death’s coldness and the silent grave.
and this hedgerow here, that closes off my view,
from so much of the ultimate horizon.
But sitting here, and watching here,
in thought, I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.
When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves,
I go on to compare that infinite silence
with this voice, and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present,
and its sound, so that in this immensity
my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck
seems sweet to me in this sea.
and the moon rests in the gardens,
calm on the roofs, and reveals, clear,
far off, every mountain. O my lady,
the paths are still, and the night lights
shine here and there from the balconies:
you sleep, and sleep gently welcomed you
to your quiet room: nothing
troubles you: you still don’t know, or guess
with how deep a wound you’ve hurt my heart.
You sleep: I gaze at the sky
that seems so kind to my eyes:
gaze on ancient all-powerful Nature,
who created me for pain. She said:
‘I refuse you hope, even hope, and may
your eyes not shine, except with tears.’
Today was holy: now rest
from pleasure, remember in dream, perhaps,
how many you liked today, how many
liked you: not I, it’s not I that hope
to fill your thoughts. Instead I ask
what life has left me, throw myself
to earth, cry out, and tremble: oh,
terrible days of green youth! Ah, on the road
nearby, I hear the solitary song
of the worker returning to his poor
lodging, late, after the revels:
and it grips my heart fiercely
to think the whole world passes,
and scarcely leaves a trace. See: the holiday’s
over: some nondescript day follows:
time carries off all mortal things.
Where now’s the sound of all those
ancient peoples? Where are the cries
of our famous ancestors, Rome’s
vast empire, its weapons, the clash
of arms, crossing land and sea?
All’s peace and silence: the world
rests entirely, and we speak of them no more.
Now I remember, in my young days,
when the longed-for holiday was awaited,
how, once it had passed, I lay, in sadness,
pressed tight to my sheets: and, deep in the night,
a song I heard in the streets,
died, little by little, far off,
crushing my heart, as now.
how almost a year since, full of anguish,
I climbed this hill to gaze at you again,
and you hung there, over that wood, as now,
clarifying all things. Filled with mistiness,
trembling, that’s how your face seemed to me,
with all those tears that welled in my eyes, so
troubled was my life, and is, and does not change,
O moon, my delight. And yet it does help me,
to record my sadness and tell it, year by year.
Oh how sweetly it hurts, when we are young,
when hope has such a long journey to run,
and memory is so short,
this remembrance of things past, even if it
is sad, and the pain lasts!
at sunset,
carrying her sheaf of grass: in her fingers
a bunch of violets and roses:
she’s ready, as before,
to wreathe her hair and bodice,
for tomorrow’s holiday.
The old woman sits spinning,
facing the dying sunlight,
on the stairway, with her neighbours,
telling the tale of her own young days,
when she dressed for the festival,
and still slim and lovely,
danced all evening, with those young
boys, companions of her fairer season.
Already the whole sky darkens,
the air turns deep blue: already
shadows of hills and roofs return,
on the young moon’s pale rising.
Now the bells are witness
to the coming holiday:
you would say the heart
might take comfort from the sound.
A gang of little boys
shout in the tiny square,
leaping here and there,
making a happy din:
and the farmhand, whistling,
returns for his simple meal,
dreams of his day of rest.
When the other lights are quenched, all round,
and everything else is silent,
I hear the hammer ringing, I hear
the carpenter sawing: he’s still awake
in the lamplight, in his shut workshop,
hurrying and straining,
to finish his task before dawn.
This is the best of the seven days,
full of hope and joy:
tomorrow the hours will bring
anxiety and sadness, and make each
turn, in thought, to their accustomed toil.
Lively boy,
your life’s sweet flowering
is like this day of gladness,
a clear day, unclouded,
that heralds life’s festival.
Enjoy the sweet hour, my child,
this pleasant, delightful season.
I’ll say nothing, more: let it not grieve you
if your holiday, like mine, is slow to arrive.
my weary heart. The last illusion has died
I thought eternal. Died. I feel, in truth,
not only hope, but desire
for dear illusion has vanished.
Rest forever. You’ve laboured
enough. Not a single thing is worth
your beating: the earth’s not worthy
of your sighs. Bitter and tedious,
life is, nothing more: and the world is mud.
Be silent now. Despair
for the last time. To our race Fate
gave only death. Now scorn Nature,
that brute force
that secretly governs the common hurt,
and the infinite emptiness of all.
why you are there, silent Moon.
You rise at night, and go
contemplating deserts: then you set.
Are you not sated yet
with riding eternal roads?
Are you not weary, still wishing
to gaze at these valleys?
It mirrors your life,
the life of a shepherd.
He rises at dawn:
he drives his flock over the fields, sees
the flocks, the streams, the grass:
tired at evening he rests:
expecting nothing more.
Tell me, O Moon, what life is
worth to a shepherd, or
your life to you? Tell me: where
does my brief wandering lead,
or your immortal course?
Like an old man, white-haired, infirm,
barefoot and half-naked,
with a heavy load on his shoulders,
running onwards, panting,
over mountains, through the valleys,
on sharp stones, in sand and thickets,
wind and storm, when the days burn
and when they freeze,
through torrents and marshes,
falling, rising, running faster,
faster, without rest or pause,
torn, bleeding: till he halts
where all his efforts,
all the roads, have led:
a dreadful, vast abyss
into which he falls, headlong, forgetting all.
Virgin Moon,
such is the life of man.
Man is born in labour:
and there’s a risk of death in being born.
The very first things he learns
are pain and anguish: from the first
his mother and father
console him for being born.
Then as he grows
they both support him, go on
trying, with words and actions,
to give him heart,
console him merely for being human:
there’s nothing kinder
a parent can do for a child.
Yet why bring one who needs
such comforting to life,
and then keep him alive?
If life is a misfortune,
why grant us such strength?
Such is the human condition,
inviolate Moon.
But you who are not mortal,
care little, maybe, for my words.
Yet you, lovely, eternal wanderer,
so pensive, perhaps you understand
this earthly life,
this suffering, the sighs that exist:
what this dying is, this last
fading of our features,
the vanishing from earth, the losing
all familiar, loving company.
And you must understand
the ‘why’ of things, and view the fruits
of morning, evening,
silence, endless passing time.
You know (you must) at what sweet love
of hers the springtime smiles,
the use of heat, and whom the winter
benefits with frost.
You know a thousand things, reveal
a thousand things still hidden from a simple shepherd.
Often as I gaze at you
hanging so silently, above the empty plain
that the sky confines with its far circuit:
or see you steadily
follow me and my flock:
or when I look at the stars blazing in the sky,
musing I say to myself:
‘What are these sparks,
this infinite air, this deep
infinite clarity? What does this
vast solitude mean? And what am I?’
So I question. About these
magnificent, immeasurable mansions,
and their innumerable family:
and the steady urge, the endless motion
of all celestial and earthly things,
circling without rest,
always returning to their starting place:
I can’t imagine
their use or fruit. But you, deathless maiden,
I’m sure, know everything.
This I know, and feel,
that others, perhaps, may gain
benefit and comfort from
the eternal spheres, from
my fragile being: but to me life is evil.
O flock at peace, O happy creatures,
I think you have no knowledge of your misery!
How I envy you!
Not only because
you’re almost free of worries:
quickly forgetting all hardship,
every hurt, each deep fear:
but because you never know tedium.
When you lie in the shade, on the grass,
you’re peaceful and content:
and you spend most of the year
untroubled, in that state.
If I sit on the grass, in the shade,
weariness clouds my mind,
and, as if a thorn pricked me,
sitting there I’m still further
from finding peace and rest.
Yet there’s nothing I need,
and I’ve known no reason for tears.
I can’t say what you enjoy
or why: but you’re fortunate.
O my flock: there’s little still
I enjoy, and that’s not all I regret.
If you could speak, I’d ask you:
‘Tell me, why are all creatures
at peace, idle, lying
in sweet ease: why, if I lie down
to rest, does boredom seize me?’
If I had wings, perhaps,
to fly above the clouds,
and count the stars, one by one,
or roam like thunder from crest to crest,
I’d be happier, my sweet flock,
I’d be happier, bright moon.
Or perhaps my thought
strays from truth, gazing at others’ fate:
perhaps whatever form, whatever state
it’s in, its cradle or its fold,
the day of birth is dark to one that’s born.
war in me, for the first time, and I said:
‘Ah, if this is love, how it torments me!’
When, with eyes fixed wholly on the ground,
I marvelled at her, she who was first to open,
all innocent, the passage to my heart.
Ah, Love, how badly you’ve treated me!
Why does such sweet affection bring
so much desire, and so much grief?
And why did such delight enter my heart
not serenely, not entire and pure,
but filled with agony and trouble?
Tell me, gentle heart, what fear
what anguish entered with that thought,
compared with which all pleasures were annoyance?
Fulfilling thought that offered up yourself,
in the day and night, when all things seem
to be at peace in this hemisphere,
you troubled me, unquiet, happy,
wretched, lying beneath the covers,
throbbing strongly at every moment.
And whenever, sad, afflicted, weary,
I closed my eyes in sleep: sleep vanished
consumed by fever and delirium.
Oh how the sweet vision rose, living,
among the shadows, my closed eyes
gazing at it beneath my eyelids!
Oh, how that sweetest of motions spread
through my bones, oh, how a thousand
confused thoughts rolled through
my trembling soul! As a breeze, flows
through the heights of an ancient forest,
and creates a long, uncertain murmuring.
And oh, my heart, while I was silent, while
I failed to struggle, what did you say, as she departed,
she the source of pain and throbbing?
I’d no sooner felt the burning
of that blaze of love, than the little breeze
that fanned the flame, flew on its way.
I lay there sleepless in the dawn,
and heard those horses, that would leave me lost,
stamping their hooves outside my ancestral home.
And I, secret, timid, and unsure, turned
my eager hearing, eyes open in vain,
towards the balcony in the darkness,
to hear the last words, that might fall
from her lips: to hear that voice:
alas, since heaven took all else away.
The servants’ voices often struck
my doubting ear, and a chill took me,
and my heart beat more fiercely!
And when that dear voice finally sank
into my heart, mixed with the sounds
of carriage wheels and horses:
I was left deserted, huddled trembling
on my bed, and, eyes closed, pressed
my hand to my heart and sighed.
Later, stupefied, dragging my
shaking limbs round the silent room,
I said: ‘What else could ever move my heart?’
Then the bitterest memory
rooted in my mind, and closed my heart
to all other voices, every other form.
And a deep grief searched my breast,
as when the heavens rain widely,
washing the fields with melancholy.
Nor did I, a boy of eighteen summers
recognise you, Love, when you first tried
your power on one born to weep.
When I scorned every joy, and the stars’
smiles did not please, not dawn’s
calm silence, not green fields.
Even the love of glory was silent
in my heart that it used to warm,
where once love of beauty lived.
My eyes would not return to my studies,
and that which I thought had made
all other desires vain, seemed vain itself.
Ah how could I have altered so, in myself,
how had one love taken all others from me?
Ah, in truth, how changeable we are!
Only my heart pleased, and that
perpetual dialogue buried in my heart,
keeping a guard on grief.
And my eyes that searched the earth or myself,
and allowed no fugitive or wandering glance
to light on any face, vile or lovely:
fearing to disturb the bright, virgin
image that I held in my heart, as waves
in a lake may be stirred by the breeze.
And that regret, for not having fully
delighted in fleeting days,
that weighs on the spirit,
changing to poison past delight,
stung my heart wholly: while shame
with its harsh bite still had no power.
I swear to heaven, to you, great spirits,
that there was no low desire in my heart:
it burned with pure, unblemished fire.
That fire still lives, affection lives,
the lovely image breathes in my thought,
from which I draw no delight that is not
heavenly, and that, alone, satisfies me.
from the crest of the ancient tower
to the landscape, while day dies:
while music wanders the valley.
Spring brightens
the air around, exults in the fields,
so the heart is moved to see it.
Flocks are bleating, herds are lowing:
more birds happily make a thousand
circles in the clear sky, all around,
celebrating these happy times:
you gaze pensively, apart, at it all:
no companions, and no flight,
no pleasures call you, no play:
you sing, and so see out
the year, the sweet flowering of your life.
Ah, how like
your ways to mine! Pleasure and Joy
youth’s sweet companions,
and, Love, its dear friend,
sighing, bitter at passing days,
I no longer care for them, I don’t know why:
indeed I seem to fly far from them:
seem to wander, a stranger
in my native place,
in the springtime of my life.
This day, yielding to evening now,
is a holiday in our town.
You can hear a bell ring in the clear sky,
you can hear the cannon’s iron thunder,
echoing away, from farm to farm.
Dressed for the festival
young people here
leave the houses, fill the streets,
to see and be seen, with happy hearts.
I go out, alone,
into the distant country,
postpone all delight and joy
to some other day: and meanwhile
my gaze takes in the clear air,
brings me the sun that sinks and vanishes
among the distant mountains,
after the cloudless day, and seems to say,
that the beauty of youth diminishes.
You, lonely bird, reaching the evening
of this life the stars grant you,
truly, cannot regret
your existence: since your every
action is born of nature.
But I, if I can’t
evade through prayer,
the detested threshold of old age,
when these eyes will be dumb to others,
and the world empty, and the future
darker and more irksome than the present,
what will I think of such desires?
Of these years of mine? Of what happened?
Ah I’ll repent, and often,
un-consoled, I’ll gaze behind me.
far from your own branch,
where are you flying? – The wind
tore me from the beech that bore me.
Whirling, in flight, it takes me
from the forest to the plain,
from the valley to the mountain.
I myself journey
forever: ignoring all the rest.
I go where all things go,
where, of nature, goes
the flower of the rose,
and the flower of the laurel.
Note: The original French poem is by Antoine-Vincent Arnault (1766-1834)
to learn from the Muses,
one of them grasped me by the hand
and all that day
led me around,
to contemplate her workshop.
Little by little she showed me
the instruments of her art,
and all their diverse uses
the effect of each of them
when they’re employed in prose
or they’re employed in verses.
I marvelled, and I said:
‘And Muse, your file?’ The Goddess
said: ‘Worn out: we do without it.’
‘Shouldn’t it be repaired,’ I added, ‘if it’s done for?’
She replied: ‘It should, but it’s something we’ve no time for.’
the moon descends,
over the silvery waters and fields,
where the breeze sighs,
and distant shadows make
a thousand vague aspects,
and deceptive objects,
among the tranquil waves,
the branches, hedges, hills, and villages:
and, lost at the sky’s end,
behind Alps or Apennines, or
in endless Tyrrhenian deeps,
sets, and dims the world,
so that shadows scatter, and a single
gloom darkens valley and mountain,
so night remains alone,
and the carter on the road salutes,
with mournful song, the last gleam
of vanishing light that led him on:
so youth melts away,
and leaves
our mortal state. The shadows
and the forms of delighted
illusion flee: and all the distant
hopes our mortal nature
trusts in, grow less.
Life remains, dark,
abandoned. The uncertain traveller
strains his eyes, blindly, in vain,
to find some goal or reason in the long
road ahead: and sees
how human habitation becomes
truly foreign to him, and he to it.
Our wretched life
would have seemed
too happy and joyful, up there, if youth,
whose every good brings a thousand ills,
had been allowed to last a lifetime.
The law that sentences
all creatures to death, would be too mild,
if half of life
had not first been made
harsher than the vilest death.
The eternals made a worthy discovery
of immortal intellect: old age,
worst of all evils, where desire
clings, but hope is quenched,
the founts of pleasure run dry, pain
often grows, and good will not return.
You, hills and shores,
the glory in the west, that silvered
the veil of night, has died,
yet you will not
be widowed long: from the east
you’ll see the sky
whiten anew, and dawn will rise:
then the sun will quickly follow
and, shine out
with powerful flames,
flooding you, and the eternal realms,
with torrents of light.
But mortal life, will not brighten
with new light, or new dawn,
once lovely youth is gone.
It will be lonely to the end: the gods
have set no limit to the gloom
that darkens old age, except the tomb.
(or The Flower of the Desert)
‘And men loved darkness rather than the light’
John, III:19
content with deserts:
here on the arid slope of Vesuvius,
that formidable mountain, the destroyer,
that no other tree or flower adorns,
you scatter your lonely
bushes all around. I’ve seen before
how you beautify empty places
with your stems, circling the City
once the mistress of the world,
and it seems that with their grave,
silent, aspect they bear witness,
reminding the passer-by
of that lost empire.
Now I see you again on this soil,
a lover of sad places abandoned by the world,
a faithful friend of hostile fortune.
These fields scattered
with barren ash, covered
with solid lava,
that resounds under the traveller’s feet:
where snakes twist, and couple
in the sun, and the rabbits return
to their familiar cavernous burrows:
were once happy, prosperous farms.
They were golden with corn, echoed
to lowing cattle:
there were gardens and palaces,
the welcome leisure retreats
for powerful, famous cities,
which the proud mountain crushed
with all their people, beneath the torrents
from its fiery mouth. Now all around
is one ruin,
where you root, gentle flower, and as though
commiserating with others’ loss, send
a perfume of sweetest fragrance to heaven,
that consoles the desert. Let those
who praise our existence visit
these slopes, to see how carefully
our race is nurtured
by loving Nature. And here
they can justly estimate
and measure the power of humankind,
that the harsh nurse, can with a slight movement,
obliterate one part of, in a moment, when we
least fear it, and with a little less gentle
a motion, suddenly,
annihilate altogether.
The ‘magnificent and progressive fate’
of the human race
is depicted in this place.
Proud, foolish century, look,
and see yourself reflected,
you who’ve abandoned
the path, marked by advancing thought
till now, and reversed your steps,
boasting of this regression
you call progress.
All the intellectuals, whose evil fate
gave them you for a father,
praise your babbling, though
they often make a mockery
of you, among themselves. But I’ll
not vanish into the grave in shame:
As far as I can, I’ll demonstrate,
the scorn for you, openly,
that’s in my heart,
though I know oblivion crushes
those hated by their own time.
I’ve already mocked enough
at that fate I’ll share with you.
You pursue Freedom, yet want thought
to be slave of a single age again:
by thought we’ve risen a little higher
than barbarism, by thought alone civilisation
grows, only thought guides public affairs
towards the good.
The truth of your harsh fate
and the lowly place Nature gave you
displease you so. Because of it
you turn your backs on the light
that illuminated you: and in flight,
you call him who pursues it vile,
and only him great of heart
who foolishly or cunningly mocks himself
or others, praising our human state above the stars.
A man generous and noble of soul,
of meagre powers and weak limbs,
doesn’t boast and call himself
strong and rich in possessions,
doesn’t make a foolish pretence
of splendid living or cutting a fine
figure among the crowd:
but allows himself to appear
as lacking wealth and power,
and says so, openly, and gives
a true value to his worth.
I don’t consider a man
a great-hearted creature, but stupid,
who, born to die, nurtured in pain,
says he is made for joy,
and fills pages with the stench
of pride, promising
an exalted destiny on earth,
and a new happiness, unknown to heaven
much less this world, to people
whom a surging wave, a breath
of malignant air, a subterranean tremor,
destroys so utterly that they
scarcely leave a memory behind.
He has a noble nature
who dares to raise his voice
against our common fate,
and with an honest tongue,
not compromising truth,
admits the evil fate allotted us,
our low and feeble state:
a nature that shows itself
strong and great in suffering,
that does not add to its miseries with fraternal
hatred and anger, things worse
than other evils, blaming mankind
for its sorrows, but places blame
on Her who is truly guilty, who is the mother
of men in bearing them, their stepmother in malice.
They call her enemy:
and consider
the human race
to be united, and ranked against her,
from of old, as is true,
judge all men allies, embrace
all with true love, offering sincere
prompt support, and expecting it
in the various dangers and anguish
of the mutual war on her. And think
it as foolish to take up arms against men
and set up nets and obstacles
against their neighbours as it would be in war,
surrounded by the opposing army, in the most
intense heat of battle,
to start fierce struggles with friends,
forgetting the enemy,
to incite desertion, and wave their swords
among their own forces.
If such thoughts were revealed
to the crowd, as they used to be,
along with the horror that first
brought men together in social contract
against impious Nature,
then by true wisdom
the honest, lawful intercourse
of citizens would be partly renewed,
and justice and piety, would own
to another root than foolish pride,
on which the morals of the crowd
are as well founded
as anything else that’s based on error.
Often I sit here, at night,
on these desolate slopes,
that a hardened lava-flow has clothed
with brown, and which seem to undulate still,
and over the gloomy waste,
I see the stars flame, high
in the purest blue,
mirrored far off by the sea:
the universe glittering with sparks
that wheel through the tranquil void.
And then I fix my eyes on those lights
that seem pin-pricks,
yet are so vast in form
that earth and sea are really a pin-prick
to them: to whom man,
and this globe where man is nothing,
are completely unknown: and gazing
at those still more infinitely remote,
knots, almost, of stars,
that seem like mist to us, to which
not only man and earth but all
our stars, infinite in number and mass,
with the golden sun,
are unknown, or seem like points
of misted light, as they appear
from earth: what do you seem like,
then, in my thoughts, O children
of mankind? And mindful of
your state here below, of which
the ground I stand on bears witness,
and that, on the other hand, you believe
that you’ve been appointed the master
and end of all things: and how often
you like to talk about the creators
of all things universal, who descended
to this obscure grain of sand called earth,
for you, and happily spoke to you, often:
and that, renewing these ridiculous dreams,
you still insult the wise, in an age
that appears to surpass the rest
in knowledge and social customs: what feeling is it,
then, wretched human race, what thought
of you finally pierces my heart?
I don’t know if laughter or pity prevails.
As a little apple that falls from a tree:
late autumn ripeness,
and nothing else, bringing it to earth:
crushes, wastes, and covers
in a moment, the sweet nests
of a tribe of ants, carved out
of soft soil, with vast labour,
and the works, the wealth,
that industrious race had vied
to achieve, with such effort,
and created in the summer: so the cities
of the farthest shores
that the sea bathed,
were shattered, confounded, covered
in a few moments, by a night of ruin,
by ashes, lava and stones,
hurled to the heights of heaven
from the womb of thunder,
falling again from above,
mingled in molten streams,
or by the vast overflow
of liquefied masses,
metals and burning sand,
descending the mountainside
racing over the grass: so that now
the goats graze above them,
and new cities rise beside them, whose base
is their buried, demolished walls
that the cruel mountain seems to crush underfoot.
Nature has no more love or care
for the seed of man
than for the ants: and if the destruction
of one is rarer than that of the other,
it’s for no other reason
than that mankind is less rich in offspring.
Fully eighteen hundred years
have passed, since those once-populated cities
vanished, crushed by fiery force,
yet the farmer intent
on his vines, this dead
and ashen soil barely nourishes,
still lifts his gaze
with suspicion,
to the fatal peak
that sits there brooding,
no gentler than ever, still threatening
to destroy him, his children, and his
meagre possessions. And often
the wretch, lying awake
on the roof of his house, where
the wandering breezes blow at night,
jumps up now and again, and checks
the course of the dreadful boiling,
that pours from that inexhaustible lap
onto its sandy slopes, and illuminates
the bay of Capri, the ports
of Naples and Mergellina.
And if he sees it nearing, or hears
the water bubbling, feverishly, deep
in the well, he wakes his children, quickly
wakes his wife, and fleeing, with whatever
of their possessions they can grasp,
watches from the distance, as his familiar
home, and the little field
his only defence against hunger,
fall prey to the burning tide,
crackling as it arrives, inexorably
spreading over all this, and hardening.
Lifeless Pompeii returns to the light of heaven
after ancient oblivion, like a buried
skeleton, that piety or the greed
for land gives back to the open air:
and, from its empty forum,
through the ranks of broken
columns, the traveller contemplates
the forked peak and the smoking summit,
that still threatens the scattered ruins.
And, like night’s secret horror,
through the empty theatres,
the twisted temples, the shattered
houses, where the bat hides its brood,
like a sinister brand
that circles darkly through silent palaces,
the glow of the deathly lava runs,
reddening the shadows
from far away, staining the region round.
So, indifferent to man, and the ages
he calls ancient, and the way descendants
follow on from their ancestors,
Nature, always green, proceeds instead
by so long a route
she seems to remain at rest. Meanwhile empires fall,
peoples and tongues pass: She does not see:
and man lays claim to eternity’s merit.
And you, slow-growing broom,
who adorn this bare landscape
with fragrant thickets,
you too will soon succumb
to the cruel power of subterranean fire,
that, revisiting places
it knows, will stretch its greedy margin
over your soft forest. And you’ll bend
your innocent head, without a struggle,
beneath that mortal burden:
yet a head that’s not been bent in vain
in cowardly supplication
before a future oppressor: nor lifted
in insane pride towards the stars,
or beyond the desert, where
your were born and lived,
not through intent, but chance:
and you’ll have been so much wiser
so much less unsound than man, since you
have never believed your frail species,
can be made immortal by yourself, or fate.
I hear the joyful birds, the hen,
returning to the path,
renews her cackling. See the clear sky
opening from the west, over the mountain:
the landscape clarifies,
the river gleams bright in the valley.
Now every heart is happy, on every side
there’s the noise of work
as they return to business.
The craftsman comes to the door,
his work in hand, singing,
to gaze at the humid sky:
a girl runs out to draw water
that’s charged with fresh rain:
and, from street to street,
the vegetable seller
raises his cry again
See the sun return, see how it’s smiling
from hills and farms. The servants
open balconies, terraces, lodges:
hear the harness clinking, far off
along the highway: as the traveller’s carriage
moves, once more, down the road.
Every heart is happy.
When was life as sweet,
as pleasant as it is now?
When did men turn
to their work, or bend to
their studies with such love? Or begin
some new venture? Or were so forgetful
of old wrongs? Joy is born of pain:
vain joy, the fruit
of fear past, in one shaken,
and fearful of death,
who abhorred life before:
fear that made men sweat and tremble
in enduring anguish,
shivering, silent, pale: seeing
lightning, cloud, and wind,
moving to attack them.
O kindly Nature,
these are your gifts,
these are the delights
you give to mortals. To be free
of pain is our delight.
You scatter ills with generous hands: grief
appears of itself, and pleasure, that’s so often
born of trouble, through the monstrous,
and the miraculous, is our only gain. The human
race, dear to the gods! Happy enough
to gain a breathing space
from sorrow: blessed
when death heals you of every grief.
lord of my deepest mind:
terrible, but dear
gift of the heavens: companion
of my darkest days,
Thought, that often stirs inside me.
Who does not talk of your secret
nature? Who does not know its power
among us? Yet often, since human
language gains its own impetus
from your action, it often seems strange
to those who listen to what you create.
How lonely my mind
has become, since you
took it as your home!
All my other thoughts vanish,
swift as flashes of lightning
all around: Like a tower
on an empty plain,
you stand alone, gigantic, among them.
What are earthly affairs,
what is all life to me,
compared with you!
What intolerable tedium,
our leisure, familiar trades,
the vain hopes of vain pleasure,
beside that joy,
the heavenly joy that comes from you!
Just as a traveller is happy
to turn his eyes from bare rock
in the rugged Apennines,
towards some far green sunlit field,
so I turn willingly from harsh, dry
mundane conversations, as if
towards a happy garden, and your space
restores my senses again.
It seems well nigh incredible
I’ve endured this wretched life,
and this foolish world,
for so long without you:
almost impossible to comprehend
how others can sigh
with desire for anything
except what resembles you.
Fear of death has never entered
my heart, since I first learned
from experience what life was.
That final necessity
this strange world sometimes praises,
yet abhors and trembles at,
seems like a jest to me today:
and if danger threatens, I pause
and smile, to contemplate its menace.
I’ve always despised
cowards, and ungenerous
spirits. Now any shameful act
stings me at once:
examples of human baseness
stir my soul, at once, to scorn.
I feel myself greater
than this insolent age
that nourishes itself on empty hope,
in love with gossip, hostile to virtue:
foolish, it asks for sense,
without seeing how life
becomes more and more senseless.
I scorn human judgement: and tread down
that fickle crowd, hostile
to true thought, who despise your worth.
What allegiance does not yield
to that from which you rise?
Indeed what other allegiance
but this has power among mortals?
Avarice, pride, hatred, disdain,
love of honour, power,
what are they but whims
compared to this? Only one allegiance
is alive to us: eternal law
has only decreed one
over-ruling lord of the human heart.
Life has no worth or meaning
except in this, which is all to us:
which alone absolves fate
for placing mortals here
to suffer, with no other purpose:
in this one allegiance,
life is more noble than death,
if not to fools, to hearts that are not base,
Sweet thought, because of your joys,
to have endured our human troubles,
and suffered this mortal life
for many years, has not been in vain:
and expert though I am in pain,
I’d still be prepared
to take to the road for such a purpose:
since I’ve never journeyed,
weary, through the sands,
among the venomous snakes,
and reached you, without my pain
being eased by your great blessing.
What a world, what a new
immensity, what a paradise it is
to which your marvellous enchantment
seemed to lift me! Where I used
to wander in that strange light,
forgetting my earthly state,
and everything of our reality,
among the dreams, I think,
that immortals know. Alas, you are,
in the end, a dream, sweet thought,
one that adorns truth for the most part:
yet a dream, a clear illusion. But you,
among nature’s happy illusions,
are divine: because you are so strong,
and vital, that you can endure tenaciously
against truth, and even adapt to truth,
and not dissolve, till you meet with death.
O my thought, it’s true, that you,
the only vital part of my days,
delightful cause of infinite pain,
will sometime be quenched with me in death:
you whose signs I feel alive in my soul,
such that you’ll be my lord for ever.
Other noble illusions
often fail in the face
of truth. The more I turn
to gaze at her,
of whom I love to speak with you,
the greater grows the delight,
the greater the delirium, I breathe.
Angelic beauty!
Wherever I look, among the lovely faces,
they are only painted images
of your face. It seems to me, you
are the sole fount of every other
loveliness, of every true beauty.
When, since I first saw you,
were you not the ultimate goal
of my deepest cares? What part of the day
passed when I did not think of you?
How often did my dreams lack
your sovereign image? Lovely as a dream,
angelic form,
in earthly place,
in the high realms of the universe,
what do I ask for, or hope to see
that is more beautiful than your eyes,
or own that is sweeter than thought of you?
‘Those whom the gods love die young’
to the brothers, Love and Death.
The world owns to none
so fine, nor do the stars.
From the former, the Good is born,
and the greatest pleasure,
to be found in the ocean of being:
the latter annuls our greatest
pain, and all our greatest evil.
Often the boy, Love,
joys in keeping company,
with a beautiful girl,
sweet to see, not
as cowardly people paint her:
and flying together through human life
they are the wise heart’s greatest solace.
No heart was ever wiser
than when pierced by love, nor firmer
in scorning wretched life,
nor so ready to face danger
for any lord but this one:
Love, where you give your help,
courage is born, is roused:
then the human race is wise
in what it does, not as so often,
only wise in thought.
When a new loving
affection is born,
in the deepest heart,
we feel the languid desire to die,
simultaneously in our soul:
how, who knows? But such
is the power and true first effect of love.
Perhaps the desolation here
terrifies our sight: perhaps a mortal finds
this world uninhabitable,
without that new,
sole, infinite happiness
his thoughts create:
and by reason of that great storm
presaged in his heart, seeks quiet,
seeks to reach harbour,
driven by desire,
that roars and darkens all around.
Then, when formidable power
wraps everything about,
and invading passion flashes in the heart,
how often you, Death,
are invoked, with intense
desire, by the troubled lover!
How often at evening, how often
when the weary body is abandoned to dawn,
he might call himself blessed
never to rise again,
or see the bitter light!
And often at the sound of the funeral bell
the dirge that takes
the dead to their eternal rest,
he envies, from his heart’s depths,
with many ardent sighs,
he who joins the lost in their ancient home.
Even the untaught man,
the farmer, ignorant
of all virtue derived from wisdom,
even a shy and timid girl,
who once felt her hair stand on end
at the name of death, dares
to fix her gaze on the tomb,
on the winding sheet, with calm constancy,
dares to meditate on
poison or the knife,
and feel, deep in her mind,
the courtesy of death.
So love leads his disciples
to death. Yet often
the internal struggle is so great
a mortal cannot endure its strength,
and either the frail body yields
to those terrible forces, and in that way
Death prevails, aided by his brother’s power:
or Love drives them towards the depths,
so the unlearned farmer,
and the tender girl,
fell themselves with violent hand
while the world,
to which heaven grants
peace and old age, mocks them.
Sweet lords, friends
of the human race,
to whom nothing in this vast
universe compares, and whom no power
but fate can overcome,
may it grant one of you
to enter fervid, happy,
intelligent minds.
And you, lovely Death,
whom I’ve always called on, and honoured
since my early years, who alone
in the world take pity on human troubles,
if you have ever been honoured
by me, if I have tried to address
the crowd’s ingratitude
for your divine status,
don’t delay, favour this
unfamiliar prayer,
close these sad eyes of mine
to the light, now, O king of the ages.
Whenever the hour falls when you come
in answer to my prayer, you’ll find me
armed, head high,
and firm against fate:
not heaping praise on the flailing hand
stained with my innocent blood,
nor blessing you, from cowardice,
like the human race of old:
I’ll throw away every vain hope
that consoles the childish world,
every foolish comfort,
and I’ll not hope for any
other moment, but yours alone:
and only wait calmly
for that day when I lay my sleeping
head on your virgin breast.
(Where The Dead Girl is Shown
Departing, and Taking Leave of her Family)
Who calls you, far
from your loved ones?
Do you abandon your father’s house
so soon, wandering off, alone? Will you
return to this threshold? Will you ever make
those who mourn you today, happy again?
Your eyes are dry, and your attitude brave,
but you still seem unhappy. It would be hard
to tell from your serious aspect,
whether your road is pleasant
or sorrowful, joyful or sad
the place you travel to. Alas, I could never
decide myself, nor perhaps has
the world decided, whether
you should be called hated by heaven,
or beloved: wretched or fortunate.
Death calls: at the dawn of day,
comes the final moment. You’ll not return
to the nest you left. You’ve left
the sight of your sweet
parents forever. The place
you go to lies underground:
there’s your dwelling for all time.
Perhaps you’re blessed: but he who gazes,
thoughtfully, at your fate, must sigh.
I think that never to see
the light is best. But, being born,
to vanish at that time when beauty
first displays her limbs and face,
and the world begins
to bow down before her from afar:
when every hope is flowering,
long before truth has flashed its gloomy
rays against her joyful brow:
and like mist condensing
to a fleeing cloud-form on the horizon,
as if she had not been,
renounce the future
for the tomb’s dark silence,
this, though to our intellect
it seems best, strikes the heart
deeply, in profound pity.
Mother Nature, bewailed and feared,
by those of the animal kingdom,
you marvel, not worth our praise,
who bear and nourish to kill,
if it’s a mortal ill
to die before our time, why
bring it on innocent heads?
If it’s a good, why make this parting
more gloomy, inconsolable,
than every other ill,
for those who go, and those who live?
Wretched, wherever they gaze,
wretched, where they turn or run,
this sensitive species!
It pleased you that youthful
hopes of life
should be illusions: trouble-filled
the tide of their years: Death their only
shield against evil: the inevitable goal,
the immutable law
ruling human life. Ah, after
the sad journey why not at least
make the ending happy? Rather
than this certain future,
the living keep before their eyes,
the sole comfort
for our miseries,
clothed in black robes,
veiled with sad shade,
why make the harbour more fearful
a sight than ever the waves were?
Given the harsh fate of dying
to which you destine us,
we whom you abandon, in our innocence,
unknowingly, unwillingly, to life,
then he who dies is more enviable
than he who witnesses the death
of those he loves. Yet though it’s true,
as I fervently believe,
that life is pain,
and death a gift, who could wish,
as indeed he should
for the death of those he cares for,
himself to still remain
behind, diminished:
to see the beloved one
with whom he’s spent so many years
carried from the threshold,
a farewell with no hope of ever
meeting again
on this world’s roads:
then left alone, abandoned on earth,
to gaze around, and in familiar places
remember the lost companion?
O Nature, how, ah how, can your heart allow
such embraces to be loosened,
friend from friend,
brother from brother,
child from father,
lover from lover: one dying,
the other granted life? How can
you make such grief
our fate, that mortals
survive a mortal love? But Nature
bestows its care on other things,
than our good or ill.
(Carved on her Tomb)
dust and skeleton. Placed motionless,
helpless, above the earth and bone,
mute, gazing at the flight of ages,
stands the sole guardian
of grief and memory, the image
of lost beauty. That sweet glance
that made men tremble as it gazed
at them, motionless, as now: those lips,
from whose depths pleasure flowed,
as though from a full urn: that neck,
once circled by desire: that loving hand,
that often, lightly opened, felt
the hand it clasped grow cold:
and the breast, at which men
visibly paled, once lived:
now they are earth
and bone: and stone conceals
the sad and shameful sight.
So fate diminishes
that image, that seemed to us
a living vision of heaven. Eternal
mystery of our being. One moment, Beauty,
the fount of vast, exalted thoughts,
ineffable feelings, towers over us, and seems
like a tremulous radiance
immortal nature casts on this arena,
the sign and sure hope
of blessed realms and the golden world,
of a superhuman fate,
granted to our mortal state:
next moment, at a light touch,
what was but now
an angelic face becomes vile,
abominable, base, and the
marvellous ideal that took
its being from it, vanishes
at once from the mind.
Infinite desires
and noble visions
are created in the mind
by virtue of harmonious knowledge:
so that the human spirit wanders
secretly through a sea of delight,
as though swimming ardently
in play through the Ocean:
But if a discordant note
strikes the ear, that paradise
turns to nothingness in a moment.
How does human nature reach
so high, if it is merely
wretched, frail, dust and shadow?
Yet if it is somehow noble,
how can our finest thoughts and acts
be kindled and quenched
for such slight, ignoble reasons?
the injured heavens, and Zephyrus revives
the dull air, and the dark shadows of clouds
are driven off, scattered down the valleys;
birds trust their fragile forms
to the wind, and the light of day
brings new desire for love, fresh hope,
penetrating the woods and through
the melting frost, to waking creatures:
perhaps human spirits, drowned in grief
and weariness might remake
the age of beauty, which tragedy, and the black
torch of truth, consumed
before its time? Are Phoebus’s rays
truly quenched in darkness
forever? Fragrant Spring
can you rouse and inspire
this frozen heart that knows
old age’s bitterness in the flower of youth?
Are you alive, O sacred Nature,
are you alive? Alive, and your maternal voice
gathered to an unaccustomed hearing?
Your rivers were once home to the bright nymphs,
the liquid founts were placid haunts and mirrors.
And the rugged mountain ridges, the tangled
woods (today the remote haunt of the winds)
trembled to the arcane dance
of immortal footsteps: and the shepherd
leading his thirsty flock through the flickering
mid-day shadows of the flowering
river-banks, heard the shrill piping
of woodland Pan echoing
along the stream: saw the waves
tremble, amazed, and, saw, vaguely,
the quiver-bearing goddess
descending into the warm flood,
washing the grime and dust of the bloody chase
from her white flanks and virgin arms.
Once, the grass and flowers breathed,
and the woods. The gentle airs,
the clouds, and the lamp of the sun,
were aware of humanity, then, when
the traveller followed you with intent eyes,
Cyprian Planet, in the empty night,
you, naked above the hills and shores,
his companion on the road, the image
of mortal thought. When, fleeing
the impure towns
and deadly anger and shame,
men clasped the rugged tree-trunks,
deep in dense woods,
and thought that living flame surged
through the dry veins, leaves breathed:
that they clasped in their arms the hidden heartbeat
of sorrowful Daphne, or sad Phyllis, or heard
Clymene’s disconsolate daughters weeping
for Phaethon, drowned by the Sun in the Italian River.
Nor, harsh cliffs, were the mournful sounds
of human misery lost
as they struck you,
while timorous Echo haunted your spaces,
not the wind’s vain wandering,
but a nymph’s unhappy spirit, she,
whom the weight of love and harsh fate
robbed of her limbs. From caves,
and naked cliffs, and desolate haunts,
she taught a message, her understanding
of our high and broken lament,
to the arching sky. You too, nightingale,
the tale declares, were expert
in human fate, you who sing now
the coming of the re-born year,
and in the deep
quiet of the countryside, through the dark silent air,
mourn your ancient wrong, an ill vengeance,
anger and pity to make the sun grow pale.
But your race is unknown to us:
grief does not form those varying
notes of yours, and free of guilt,
and so less dear to us, they climb the dark valley.
Ah, since the halls of Olympus
are empty, and thunder strays blindly
among dark clouds and mountains,
filling guilty or innocent hearts
with the same cold terror: and their native land
is alien to her children, the sad spirits
she produces: lovely Nature
listen to the unhappy cares,
and unjust fate of mortals,
and rekindle the ancient flame
in me: if you still live,
if there’s truly one thing
at least in heaven, or on
the naked earth, or in the deep sea,
that may not pity but observes our pain.
Note: The nightingale refers to the myth of Procne, Philomela and Tereus.
(Or: The Beginnings Of The Human Race)
you, glorious fathers of the human race,
will be spoken of with praise: dearer
to the eternal mover of the stars, and so much
less to be wept for, than we whom a gentler
age produces. The irreparable afflictions
of wretched mortals, born to weep,
who find their last day and the darkened
tomb sweeter than ethereal light,
were not imposed by pity or the direct
rule of Heaven. And though ancient error
delivered the human race to the tyrannous
grip of disease and misfortune,
the cause of your ancient cry, the worse crimes
of your children, their unquiet minds,
and greater madness raised Olympus’s weapons
and the neglected hands of nurturing Nature
against us: so life’s flame was detested,
and our birth from the maternal womb
was hateful, and, in violence, despairing
Erebus emerged from the earth.
O ancient father and leader
of the human family you first saw
the sun, the glorious fires of the turning spheres,
and the fresh verdure of the fields, and watched
the breezes wandering through the young meadows:
when the cliffs and deserted valleys
echoed to the rushing mountain streams,
their roar unheard: when the fair
future sites of famous peoples,
their noisy cities, still unknown, were ruled
by peace: and silent and alone
the clear rays of Phoebus and the golden moon
climbed the uncultivated hills. Oh, empty
places of the earth, untouched by crime
and sad event! Oh unhappy father
what pain for your offspring,
and what a vast chain of bitter events
destiny prepares! See the greedy field
is stained with a brother’s blood, through a brothers’
murder, in an unprecedented act of anger,
and the bright air knows evil wings of death.
The fearful exiled fratricide, fleeing
the solitary shadows and the secret anger
of the winds in the deepest woods,
raises the first city roofs, the haunts and kingdom
of all-consuming care: and for the first time
desperate contrition, breathless, ill,
brings blind mortals together and shuts them
in shared shelters: so wicked hands
rejected the curving plough, and it was shameful
to sweat in the fields: the idle occupied
the gates of the wicked: slothful bodies
tamed natural vigour, minds were languid
and indolent: and weakened humanity
accepted servitude, the ultimate harm.
And you, to whom a white dove first brought
the certain sign of promised hope,
from blind air and soaking hills:
for whom the drowned sun, rising
from ancient evening cloud,
painted a rainbow on the dark sky:
oh, you rescue the evil generation
from the hostile sky and the waves moaning
over clouded ridges. The people saved
repopulate the earth, renewing savage affections,
wicked works, and the pain that follows.
Impious hands mock the inaccessible kingdom
of the vengeful sea, and weeping and wickedness
are taught to alien shores and other stars.
Now I think of you, also, father of the elect,
strong, just: and of the generous children
born from your seed. I will speak of how you
were sitting, resting, screened by the midday shade,
of your tent, on the sweet plain of Mamre,
space and pasture for your flocks:
of how angels disguised as travellers
brought divine grace: and, O son
of wise Rebecca, how in the evening
by the rustic well in the sweet vale of Haran,
haunt of shepherds and of idle hours,
love for Laban’s lovely daughter pierced you:
unconquered Love, that condemned your proud
willing spirit to long exile, and long trouble,
and the odious burden of servitude.
There was indeed a time (The Muses’ song
and the cry of fame have not indeed fed the avid
crowd on error or empty shadows), a time
when this poor earth was friendly and pleasant
and dear to our race, and our fallen age
flowed with gold. True, streams of pure milk
did not flow down the face
of native cliffs, shepherds did not
drive tigers to the fold with their flocks,
or wolves to the springs
for their pleasure: but the human
race did live then in ignorance
of its fate, and trouble, free of misery:
a sweet primal veil of kind illusion was drawn
over the hidden laws of nature
and heaven: and content with hope
our peaceful ship reached harbour.
And a happy race still lives in the vast
forests of California, whose hearts
are not withered by pale care, whose limbs
harsh disease does not waste: the woods
feed them, the hollow cliffs shelter them,
the watered valley refreshes them, death’s
dark day looms over them unseen. Oh,
wise nature’s realms are defenceless
against our sinful daring! Their shores and caves
and peaceful woods lie open to our un-abating
fury: those violated races learn
misery’s invasion, unprecedented
greed: and happiness, fleeing, naked,
is pursued, into the western deeps.
moon: and you, herald of the day,
that rise above the cliffs, among
the silent woods: you seemed dear
and pleasant to my eyes while I
was ignorant of fate and the Furies:
now no gentle prospect smiles on my despair.
For us an unaccustomed joy revives
only when the dust-filled flow of the south-wind
blows through the liquid air and over
the quivering fields, and when the chariot,
Jupiter’s heavy chariot, above our heads,
thunders, and splits the shadowy sky.
In cliffs or deepest valleys we take
joy in the storm, in the widespread flight
of the stricken flocks, or in the sound
and conquering fury of water,
on the shifting banks of the deep river.
Your mantle is lovely, O sacred sky, and you
are lovely dew-wet earth. Ah, not one part
of that infinite beauty was granted
to wretched Sappho by the gods,
or pitiless fate. O Nature, I am only a humble
and troubled guest in your proud kingdom,
a lover scorned, and I turn heart and eyes
in vain, in supplication, towards
your graceful form. No sunlit place,
nor the dawn light at heaven’s gate
smiles on me: the brightly coloured birds
sing, but not for me, the murmur of the beech
trees is not for me: and where the bright river
shows its pure flood, beneath the shade
of the weeping willows, it draws back
its lithe waters disdainfully
from my sliding foot, touching
the perfumed shores in its retreat.
What fault, what wicked excess
stained me at birth, that heaven turned
me towards ill and her face from fortune?
How did childhood, when life
is ignorant of wrong, sin, so that stripped
of youth, its flower, my iron-dark thread
was wound on the spindle
of indomitable Fate? Incautious words
spill from my lips: the events of destiny
move in hidden ways. All is hidden,
except our unhappiness. Neglected children
we are born to weep, and our purpose lies
in the lap of the gods. Oh the cares, the hopes
of our youth! But the Father gave dreams,
sweet dreams eternal dominion
over men: virtue in plain dress
does not shine among brave deeds
or learned lines of verse.
We die. The worthless veil fallen to earth,
the naked spirit will fly towards Dis,
erasing the cruel error of the blind
dispenser of Fate. And you, live as happily
as any mortal ever lived on earth, you,
through whom a long unrequited love
long loyalty, and the vain fury
of implacable desire gripped me. Jupiter
has not sprinkled me with happiness
from his bitter jar, and my illusions died
with my childhood dreams. All
the happiest days of our youth are gone.
Illness follows: old age: and the shadow
of icy death. See, Tartarus is left
of all the prizes hoped for,
the sweet illusions: and the dark goddess,
black night, and the silent shore
confine the proud intellect.
this wearisome and troubling sleep
that we call life? By what hopes
is your heart sustained? In what thoughts,
in what happy or irksome works do you employ
that leisure your distant ancestors bequeathed you
this heavy and exhausting gift? All life
is idle, in every human condition,
if all the effort, that is aimed
at nothing worthy, and has no power
to realise its intent, is rightly named
idleness. And if I should call the labouring
crowd, seen at tranquil dawn and evening,
breaking the soil, or tending crops and herds,
idle, I would be right, since their life
is to sustain life, and life has no value
to the human race of itself alone.
The experienced sailor spends days
and nights in idleness: the endless sweat
of the workshops is idle: the soldier
on watch is idle, and in the danger of war:
and the miserly merchant lives in idleness:
whatever the care, the sweat, the watches,
the dangers, no one gains lovely happiness
for himself or others, though it’s all
mortal nature desires and searches for.
Yet for all the desire that has lead mortals
to be blessed with useless sighing
since the day when the world was born
nature has made a sort of medicine,
amongst life’s unhappiness, the various
necessities, that have to be provided
by thought and effort, and the day is
full, even if it may not be joyful,
for the human family: so that desire
is troubled and confused, and has less scope
to disturb the heart. So the creatures,
in whose hearts the desire to