O Pleasure, child of Pain,
Vain joy which is the fruit
Of bygone suffering overshadowèd
And wrung with cruel fears
Of death, whom life abhors;
Wherein, in long suspense,
Silent and cold and pale,
Man sat, and shook and shuddered to behold
Lightnings and clouds and winds,
Furious in his offense!
Beneficent Nature, these,
These are thy bounteous gifts:
These, these are the delights
Thou offerest unto mortals! To escape
From pain is bliss to us;
Anguish thou scatterest broadcast, and our woes
Spring up spontaneous, and that little joy
Born sometimes, for a miracle and show,
Of terror is our mightiest gain. O man,
Dear to the gods, count thyself fortunate
If now and then relief
Thou hast from pain, and blest
When death shall come to heal thee of all pain!
“The bodily deformities which humiliated Leopardi, and the cruel infirmities that agonized him his whole life long, wrought in his heart an invincible disgust, which made him invoke death as the sole relief. His songs, while they express discontent, the discord of the world, the conviction of the nullity of human things, are exquisite in style; they breathe a perpetual melancholy, which is often sublime, and they relax and pain your soul like the music of a single chord, while their strange sweetness wins you to them again and again.” This is the language of an Italian critic who wrote after Leopardi's death, when already it had begun to be doubted whether he was the greatest Italian poet since Dante. A still later critic finds Leopardi's style, “without relief, without lyric flight, without the great art of contrasts, without poetic leaven,” hard to read. “Despoil those verses of their masterly polish,” he says, “reduce those thoughts to prose, and you will see how little they are akin to poetry.”
I have a feeling that my versions apply some such test to Leopardi's work, and that the reader sees it in them at much of the disadvantage which this critic desires for it. Yet, after doing my worst, I am not wholly able to agree with him. It seems to me that there is the indestructible charm in it which, wherever we find it, we must call poetry. It is true that “its strange sweetness wins you again and again,” and that this “lonely pipe of death” thrills and solemnly delights as no other stop has done. Let us hear it again, as the poet sounds it, figuring himself a Syrian shepherd, guarding his flock by night, and weaving his song under the Eastern moon:
O flock that liest at rest, O blessèd thou
That knowest not thy fate, however hard,
How utterly I envy thee!
Not merely that thou goest almost free
Of all this weary pain,—
That every misery and every toil
And every fear thou straightway dost forget,—
But most because thou knowest not ennui
When on the grass thou liest in the shade.
I see thee tranquil and content,
And great part of thy years
Untroubled by ennui thou passest thus.
I likewise in the shadow, on the grass.
Lie, and a dull disgust beclouds
My soul, and I am goaded with a spur,
So that, reposing, I am farthest still
From finding peace or place.
And yet I want for naught,
And have not had till now a cause for tears.
What is thy bliss, how much,
I cannot tell; but thou art fortunate.
Or, it may be, my thought
Errs, running thus to others' destiny;
May be, to everything,
Wherever born, in cradle or in fold,
That day is terrible when it was born.
It is the same note, the same voice; the theme does not change, but perhaps it is deepened in this ode:
ON THE LIKENESS OP A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN CARVEN
UPON HER TOMB.
Such wast thou: now under earth
A skeleton and dust. O'er dust and bones
Immovably and vainly set, and mute,
Looking upon the flight of centuries,
Sole keeper of memory
And of regret is this fair counterfeit
Of loveliness now vanished. That sweet look,
Which made men tremble when it fell on them,
As now it falls on me; that lip, which once,
Like some full vase of sweets,
Ran over with delight; that fair neck, clasped
By longing, and that soft and amorous hand,
Which often did impart
An icy thrill unto the hand it touched;
That breast, which visibly
Blanched with its beauty him who looked on it—
All these things were, and now
Dust art thou, filth, a fell
And hideous sight hidden beneath a stone.
Thus fate hath wrought its will
Upon the semblance that to us did seem
Heaven's vividest image! Eternal mystery
Of mortal being! To-day the ineffable
Fountain of thoughts and feelings vast and high,
Beauty reigns sovereign, and seems
Like splendor thrown afar
From some immortal essence on these sands,
To give our mortal state
A sign and hope secure of destinies
Higher than human, and of fortunate realms,
And golden worlds unknown.
To-morrow, at a touch,
Loathsome to see, abominable, abject,
Becomes the thing that was
All but angelical before;
And from men's memories
All that its loveliness
Inspired forever faults and fades away.
Ineffable desires
And visions high and pure
Rise in the happy soul,
Lulled by the sound of cunning harmonies
Whereon the spirit floats,
As at his pleasure floats
Some fearless swimmer over the deep sea;
But if a discord strike
The wounded sense, to naught
All that fair paradise in an instant falls.
Mortality! if thou
Be wholly frail and vile,
Be only dust and shadow, how canst thou
So deeply feel? And if thou be
In part divine, how can thy will and thought
By things so poor and base
So easily be awakenèd and quenched?
Let us touch for the last time this pensive chord, and listen to its response of hopeless love. This poem, in which he turns to address the spirit of the poor child whom he loved boyishly at Recanati, is pathetic with the fact that possibly she alone ever reciprocated the tenderness with which his heart was filled.
TO SYLVIA.
Sylvia, dost thou remember
In this that season of thy mortal being
When from thine eyes shone beauty,
In thy shy glances fugitive and smiling,
And joyously and pensively the borders
Of childhood thou did'st traverse?
All day the quiet chambers
And the ways near resounded
To thy perpetual singing,
When thou, intent upon some girlish labor,
Sat'st utterly contented,
With the fair future brightening in thy vision.
It was the fragrant month of May, and ever
Thus thou thy days beguiledst.
I, leaving my fair studies,
Leaving my manuscripts and toil-stained volumes,
Wherein I spent the better
Part of myself and of my young existence,
Leaned sometimes idly from my father's windows,
And listened to the music of thy singing,
And to thy hand, that fleetly
Ran o'er the threads of webs that thou wast weaving.
I looked to the calm heavens,
Unto the golden lanes and orchards,
And unto the far sea and to the mountains;
No mortal tongue may utter
What in my heart I felt then.
O Sylvia mine, what visions,
What hopes, what hearts, we had in that far season!
How fair and good before us
Seemed human life and fortune!
When I remember hope so great, beloved,
An utter desolation
And bitterness o'erwhelm me,
And I return to mourn my evil fortune.
O Nature, faithless Nature,
Wherefore dost thou not give us
That which thou promisest? Wherefore deceivest,
With so great guile, thy children?
Thou, ere the freshness of thy spring was withered.
Stricken by thy fell malady, and vanquished,
Did'st perish, O my darling! and the blossom
Of thy years sawest;
Thy heart was never melted
At the sweet praise, now of thy raven tresses,
Now of thy glances amorous and bashful;
Never with thee the holiday-free maidens
Reasoned of love and loving.
Ah! briefly perished, likewise,
My own sweet hope; and destiny denied me
Youth, even in my childhood!
Alas, alas, belovèd,
Companion of my childhood!
Alas, my mournèd hope! how art thou vanished
Out of my place forever!
This is that world? the pleasures,
The love, the labors, the events, we talked of,
These, when we prattled long ago together?
Is this the fortune of our race, O Heaven?
At the truth's joyless dawning,
Thou fellest, sad one, with thy pale hand pointing
Unto cold death, and an unknown and naked
Sepulcher in the distance.