THE VANITY OF THE VULGAR GREAT.
A FRAGMENT FROM THE ITALIAN OF FULVIO TESTI.
Stay, thou ambitious rill—
Ignoble offspring of some fount impure!
Beneath the rugged hill
Gloomy with shade, thou hadst thy birth obscure;
With faint steps issuing slow,
In scanty waves among the rocks to flow.
Fling not abroad thy spray,
Nor fiercely lash the green turf at thy side!
What though indulgent May
With liquid snows hath swol’n thy foaming tide;—
August will follow soon
To still thy boastings with his scorching noon.
Lo! calmly through the vale
The Po, the king of rivers, sweeps along;
Yet many a mighty sail
Bears on his breast—proud vessels—swift and strong.
Nor from the meadow’s side
’Neath summer’s sun recedes his lessened tide.
Thou threatening all around
Dost foam and roar along thy troubled path;
In grandeur newly found—
Stunning the gazer with thy noisy wrath!
Yet foolish stream! not one
Of all thy boasted glories is thine own.
The smile of yonder sky
Is brief—and change the fleeting seasons know;
On barren sands and dry
Soon to their death thy brawling waves shall flow.
O’er thee, in summer’s heat,
Shall pass the traveller with unmoistened feet.