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- To His Lady
- By Giacomo Leopardi
- Beloved beauty who inspires
- love in me from afar, your face obscured
- except when your celestial image
- stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields
- where light and nature's laughter shine more lovely—
- was it maybe you who blessed
- the innocent age called golden,
- and do you now, blithe spirit,
- fly among men? Or does that miser fate
- who hides you from us save you for the future?
- No hope of seeing you alive
- remains for me now,
- except when, naked and alone,
- my soul will go down a new street
- to its unknown home. Already at the dawn
- of my dark, uncertain day
- I imagined you a fellow traveler
- on this arid ground. But there's no thing
- that resembles you on earth. And if someone
- had a face like yours, in act and word she'd be,
- though something like you, far less beautiful.
- In spite of all the suffering
- fate decreed for human time,
- if there were anyone on earth
- who truly loved you as my thought depicts you,
- this life for him would be a blessing.
- And I see clearly how your love
- would lead me still to strive for praise and virtue,
- as I used to in my early years.
- Though heaven gave no comfort for our troubles,
- yet with you mortal life would be
- like what in heaven leads to divinity.
- In the valleys, where the song
- of the weary farmer sounds,
- and when I sit and mourn
- the illusions of youth fading,
- and on the hills where I recall
- and grieve for my lost desires
- and my life's lost hope, I think of you
- and start to shake. If only I, in this
- sad age and unhealthy atmosphere,
- could keep hold of your noble look; for since the real thing's
- missing I must make do with the image.
- Whether you are the only one
- of the eternal ideas eternal wisdom
- refuses to see arrayed in sensible form
- to know the pains of mortal life
- in transitory spoils,
- or if in the supernal spheres another earth
- from among unnumbered worlds receives you
- and a near star lovelier than the Sun
- warms you and you breathe benigner ether,
- from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief,
- accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.
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