“Do not say so, signore,” said the Italian, with a kind of groan.
“But I do say so,” said I, “and what is more, one whose shoe-strings, were he alive, I should not be worthy to untie, one of your mighty ones, has said so. Did you ever hear of Vincenzio Filicaia?”
“I believe I have, signore; did he not write a sonnet on Italy?”
“He did,” said I; “would you like to hear it?”
“Very much, signore.”
I repeated Filicaia’s glorious sonnet on Italy, and then asked him if he understood it.
“Only in part, signore; for it is composed in old Tuscan, in which I am not much versed. I believe I should comprehend it better if you were to say it in English.”
“Do say it in English,” said the landlady and her daughter; “we should so like to hear it in English.”
“I will repeat a translation,” said I, “which I made when a boy, which though far from good, has, I believe, in it something of the spirit of the original:—
“‘O Italy! on whom dark Destiny
The dangerous gift of beauty did bestow,
From whence thou hast that ample dower of wo,
Which on thy front thou bear’st so visibly.
Would thou hadst beauty less or strength more high,
That more of fear, and less of love might show,
He who now blasts him in thy beauty’s glow,
Or woos thee with a zeal that makes thee die;
Then down from Alp no more would torrents rage
Of armed men, nor Gallic coursers hot
In Po’s ensanguin’d tide their thirst assuage;
Nor girt with iron, not thine own, I wot,
Wouldst thou the fight by hands of strangers wage,
Victress or vanquish’d slavery still thy lot.’”