The Poems Of Giacomo Leopardi Part 12

One of thy friends, O worthy Gino, once, A master poet, nay, of every Art, And Science, every human faculty, For past, and present, and for future times, A learned expositor, remarked to me: "Of thy own feelings, care to speak no more!

Of them, this manly age makes no account, In economic problems quite absorbed, And with an eye for politics alone, Of what avail, thy own heart to explore?

Seek not within thyself material For song; but sing the needs of this our age, And consummation of its ripening hope!"

O memorable words! Whereat I laughed Like chanticleer, the name of _hope_ to hear Thus strike upon my ear profane, as if A jest it were, or prattle of a child Just weaned. But now a different course I take, Convinced by many s.h.i.+ning proofs, that he Must not resist or contradict the age, Who seeketh praise or pudding at its hands, But faithfully and servilely obey; And so will find a short and easy road Unto the stars. And I who long to reach The stars will not, howe'er, select the needs Of this our age for burden of my song; For these, increasing constantly, are still By merchants and by work-shops amply met; But I will sing of hope, of hope whereof The G.o.ds now grant a pledge so palpable.

The first-fruits of our new felicity Behold, in the enormous growth of hair, Upon the lip, upon the cheek, of youth!

O hail, thou salutary sign, first beam Of light of this our wondrous, rising age!

See, how before thee heaven and earth rejoice, How sparkle all the damsels' eyes with joy, How through all banquets and all festivals The fame of the young bearded heroes flies!

Grow for your country's sake, ye manly youth!

Beneath the shadow of your fleecy locks, Will Italy increase, and Europe from The mouths of Tagus to the h.e.l.lespont, And all the world will taste the sweets of peace.

And thou, O tender child, for whom these days Of gold are yet in store, begin to greet Thy bearded father with a smile, nor fear The harmless blackness of his loving face.

Laugh, darling child; for thee are kept the fruits Of so much dazzling eloquence. Thou shalt Behold joy reign in cities and in towns, Old age and youth alike contented dwell, And undulating beards of two spans long!

THE SETTING OF THE MOON.

As, in the lonely night, Above the silvered fields and streams Where zephyr gently blows, And myriad objects vague, Illusions, that deceive, Their distant shadows weave Amid the silent rills, The trees, the hedges, villages, and hills; Arrived at heaven's boundary, Behind the Apennine or Alp, Or into the deep bosom of the sea, The moon descends, the world grows dim; The shadows disappear, darkness profound Falls on each hill and vale around, And night is desolate, And singing, with his plaintive lay, The parting gleam of friendly light The traveller greets, whose radiance bright, Till now, hath guided him upon his way;

So vanishes, so desolate Youth leaves our mortal state.

The shadows disappear, And the illusions dear; And in the distance fading all, are seen The hopes on which our suffering natures lean.

Abandoned and forlorn Our lives remain; And the bewildered traveller, in vain, As he its course surveys, To find the end, or object tries, Of the long path that still before him lies.

A hopeless darkness o'er him steals; Himself an alien on the earth he feels.

Too happy, and too gay Would our hard lot appear To those who placed us here, if youth, Whose every joy is born of pain, Through all our days were suffered to remain; Too merciful the law, That sentences each animal to death, Did not the road that leads to it, E'er half-completed, unto us appear Than death itself more sad and drear.

Thou blest invention of the G.o.ds, And worthy of their intellects divine, Old age, the last of all our ills, When our desires still linger on, Though every ray of hope is gone; When pleasure's fountains all are dried, Our pains increasing, every joy denied!

Ye hills, and vales, and fields, Though in the west hath set the radiant orb That shed its l.u.s.tre on the veil of night, Will not long time remain bereft, In hopeless darkness left?

Ye soon will see the eastern sky Grow white again, the dawn arise, Precursor of the sun, Who with the splendor of his rays Will all the scene irradiate, And with his floods of light The fields of heaven and earth will inundate.

But mortal life, When lovely youth has gone, Is colored with no other light, And knows no other dawn.

The rest is hopeless wretchedness and gloom; The journey's end, the dark and silent tomb.

THE GINESTRA,

OR THE FLOWER OF THE WILDERNESS.

Here, on the arid ridge Of dead Vesuvius, Exterminator terrible, That by no other tree or flower is cheered, Thou scatterest thy lonely leaves around, O fragrant flower, With desert wastes content. Thy graceful stems I in the solitary paths have found, The city that surround, That once was mistress of the world; And of her fallen power, They seemed with silent eloquence to speak Unto the thoughtful wanderer.

And now again I see thee on this soil, Of wretched, world-abandoned spots the friend, Of ruined fortunes the companion, still.

These fields with barren ashes strown, And lava, hardened into stone, Beneath the pilgrim's feet, that hollow sound, Where by their nests the serpents coiled, Lie basking in the sun, And where the conies timidly To their familiar burrows run, Were cheerful villages and towns, With waving fields of golden grain, And musical with lowing herds; Were gardens, and were palaces, That to the leisure of the rich A grateful shelter gave; Were famous cities, which the mountain fierce, Forth-darting torrents from his mouth of flame, Destroyed, with their inhabitants.

Now all around, one ruin lies, Where thou dost dwell, O gentle flower, And, as in pity of another's woe, A perfume sweet thou dost exhale, To heaven an offering, And consolation to the desert bring.

Here let him come, who hath been used To chant the praises of our mortal state, And see the care, That loving Nature of her children takes!

Here may he justly estimate The power of mortals, whom The cruel nurse, when least they fear, With motion light can in a moment crush In part, and afterwards, when in the mood, With motion not so light, can suddenly, And utterly annihilate.

Here, on these blighted coasts, May he distinctly trace "The princely progress of the human race!"

Here look, and in a mirror see thyself, O proud and foolish age!

That turn'st thy back upon the path, That thought revived So clearly indicates to all, And this, thy movement retrograde, Dost _Progress_ call.

Thy foolish prattle all the minds, Whose cruel fate thee for a father gave, Besmear with flattery, Although, among themselves, at times, They laugh at thee.

But I will not to such low arts descend, Though envy it would be for me, The rest to imitate, And, raving, wilfully, To make my song more pleasing to thy ears: But I will sooner far reveal, As clearly as I can, the deep disdain That I for thee within my bosom feel; Although I know, oblivion Awaits the man who holds his age in scorn: But this misfortune, which I share with thee, My laughter only moves.

Thou dream'st of liberty, And yet thou wouldst anew that thought enslave, By which alone we are redeemed, in part, From barbarism; by which alone True progress is obtained, And states are guided to a n.o.bler end.

And so the truth of our hard lot, And of the humble place Which Nature gave us, pleased thee not; And like a coward, thou hast turned thy back Upon the light, which made it evident; Reviling him who does that light pursue, And praising him alone Who, in his folly, or from motives base, Above the stars exalts the human race.

A man of poor estate, and weak of limb, But of a generous, truthful soul, Nor calls, nor deems himself A Croesus, or a Hercules, Nor makes himself ridiculous Before the world with vain pretence Of vigor or of opulence; But his infirmities and needs He lets appear, and without shame, And speaking frankly, calls each thing By its right name.

I deem not _him_ magnanimous, But simply, a great fool, Who, born to perish, reared in suffering, Proclaims his lot a happy one, And with offensive pride His pages fills, exalted destinies And joys, unknown in heaven, much less On earth, absurdly promising to those Who by a wave of angry sea, Or breath of tainted air, Or shaking of the earth beneath, Are ruined, crushed so utterly, As scarce to be recalled by memory.

But truly n.o.ble, wise is _he_, Who bids his brethren boldly look Upon our common misery; Who frankly tells the naked truth, Acknowledging our frail and wretched state, And all the ills decreed to us by Fate; Who shows himself in suffering brave and strong, Nor adds unto his miseries Fraternal jealousies and strifes, The hardest things to bear of all, Reproaching man with his own grief, But the true culprit Who, in our birth, a mother is, A fierce step-mother in her will.

_Her_ he proclaims the enemy, And thinking all the human race Against her armed, as is the case, E'en from the first, united and arrayed, All men esteems confederates, And with true love embraces all, Prompt and efficient aid bestowing, and Expecting it, in all the pains And perils of the common war.

And to resent with arms all injuries, Or snares and pit-falls for a neighbor lay, Absurd he deems, as it would be, upon The field, surrounded by the enemy, The foe forgetting, bitter war With one's own friends to wage, And in the hottest of the fight, With cruel and misguided sword, One's fellow soldiers put to flight.

When truths like these are rendered clear, As once they were, unto the mult.i.tude, And when that fear, which from the first, All mortals in a social band Against inhuman Nature joined Anew shall guided be, in part, By knowledge true, then social intercourse, And faith, and hope, and charity Will a far different foundation have From that which silly fables give, By which supported, public truth and good Must still proceed with an unstable foot, As all things that in error have their root.

Oft, on these hills, so desolate, Which by the hardened flood, That seems in waves to rise, Are clad in mourning, do I sit at night, And o'er the dreary plain behold The stars above in purest azure s.h.i.+ne, And in the ocean mirrored from afar, And all the world in brilliant sparks arrayed, Revolving through the vault serene.

And when my eyes I fasten on those lights, Which seem to them a point, And yet are so immense, That earth and sea, with them compared, Are but a point indeed; To whom, not only man, But this our globe, where man is nothing, is Unknown; and when I farther gaze upon Those cl.u.s.tered stars, at distance infinite, That seem to us like mist, to whom Not only man and earth, but all our stars At once, so vast in numbers and in bulk, The golden sun himself included, are Unknown, or else appear, as they to earth, A point of nebulous light, what, then, Dost _thou_ unto my thought appear, O race of men?

Remembering thy wretched state below, Of which the soil I tread, the token bears; And, on the other hand, That thou thyself hast deemed The Lord and end of all the Universe; How oft thou hast been pleased The idle tale to tell, That to this little grain of sand, obscure, The name of earth that bears, The Authors of that Universe Have, at thy call, descended oft, And pleasant converse with thy children had; And how, these foolish dreams reviving, e'en This age its insults heaps upon the wise, Although it seems all others to excel In learning, and in arts polite; What can I think of thee Thou wretched race of men?

What thoughts discordant then my heart a.s.sail, In doubt, if scorn or pity should prevail!

As a small apple, falling from a tree In autumn, by the force Of its own ripeness, to the ground, The pleasant homes of a community Of ants, in the soft clod With careful labor built, And all their works, and all the wealth, Which the industrious citizens Had in the summer providently stored, Lays waste, destroys, and in an instant hides; So, falling from on high, To heaven forth-darted from The mountain's groaning womb, A dark destructive ma.s.s Of ashes, pumice, and of stones, With boiling streams of lava mixed, Or, down the mountain's side Descending, furious, o'er the gra.s.s, A fearful flood Of melted metals, mixed with burning sand, Laid waste, destroyed, and in short time concealed The cities on yon sh.o.r.e, washed by the sea, Where now the goats On this side browse, and cities new Upon the other stand, whose foot-stools are The buried ones, whose prostrate walls The lofty mountain tramples under foot.

Nature no more esteems or cares for man, Than for the ant; and if the race Is not so oft destroyed, The reason we may plainly see; Because the ants more fruitful are than we.

Full eighteen hundred years have pa.s.sed, Since, by the force of fire laid waste, These thriving cities disappeared; And now, the husbandman, His vineyards tending, that the arid clod, With ashes clogged, with difficulty feeds, Still raises a suspicious eye Unto that fatal crest, That, with a fierceness not to be controlled, Still stands tremendous, threatens still Destruction to himself, his children, and Their little property.

And oft upon the roof Of his small cottage, the poor man All night lies sleepless, often springing up, The course to watch of the dread stream of fire That from the inexhausted womb doth pour Along the sandy ridge, Its lurid light reflected in the bay, From Mergellina unto Capri's sh.o.r.e.

And if he sees it drawing near, Or in his well He hears the boiling water gurgle, wakes His sons, in haste his wife awakes, And, with such things as they can s.n.a.t.c.h, Escaping, sees from far His little nest, and the small field, His sole resource against sharp hunger's pangs, A prey unto the burning flood, That crackling comes, and with its hardening crust, Inexorable, covers all.

Unto the light of day returns, After its long oblivion, Pompeii, dead, an unearthed skeleton, Which avarice or piety Hath from its grave unto the air restored; And from its forum desolate, And through the formal rows Of mutilated colonnades, The stranger looks upon the distant, severed peaks, And on the smoking crest, That threatens still the ruins scattered round.

And in the horror of the secret night, Along the empty theatres, The broken temples, shattered houses, where The bat her young conceals, Like flitting torch, that smoking sheds A gloom through the deserted halls Of palaces, the baleful lava glides, That through the shadows, distant, glares, And tinges every object round.

Thus, paying unto man no heed, Or to the ages that he calls antique, Or to the generations as they pa.s.s, Nature forever young remains, Or at a pace so slow proceeds, She stationary seems.

Empires, meanwhile, decline and fall, And nations pa.s.s away, and languages: She sees it not, or _will_ not see; And yet man boasts of immortality!

And thou, submissive flower, That with thy fragrant foliage dost adorn These desolated plains, Thou, too, must fall before the cruel power Of subterranean fire, Which, to its well-known haunts returning, will Its fatal border spread O'er thy soft leaves and branches fine.

And thou wilt bow thy gentle head, Without a struggle, yielding to thy fate: But not with vain and abject cowardice, Wilt thy destroyer supplicate; Nor wilt, erect with senseless haughtiness, Look up unto the stars, Or o'er the wilderness, Where, not from choice, but Fortune's will, Thy birthplace thou, and home didst find; But wiser, far, than man, And far less weak; For thou didst ne'er, from Fate, or power of thine, Immortal life for thy frail children seek.

IMITATION.

Wandering from the parent bough, Little, trembling leaf, Whither goest thou?

"From the beech, where I was born, By the north wind was I torn.

Him I follow in his flight, Over mountain, over vale, From the forest to the plain, Up the hill, and down again.

With him ever on the way: More than that, I cannot say.

Where I go, must all things go, Gentle, simple, high and low: Leaves of laurel, leaves of rose; Whither, heaven only knows!"

SCHERZO.

When, as a boy, I went To study in the Muses' school, One of them came to me, and took Me by the hand, and all that day, She through the work-shop led me graciously, The mysteries of the craft to see.