Grant me, O Heaven, my blood
Shall be as fire unto Italian hearts!
Where are thy sons? I hear the sound of arms,
Of wheels, of voices, and of drums;
In foreign fields afar
Thy children fight and fall.
Wait, Italy, wait! I see, or seem to see,
A tumult as of infantry and horse,
And smoke and dust, and the swift flash of swords
Like lightning among clouds.
Wilt thou not hope? Wilt thou not lift and turn
Thy trembling eyes upon the doubtful close?
For what, in yonder fields,
Combats Italian youth? O gods, ye gods,
For other lands Italian swords are drawn!
Oh, misery for him who dies in war,
Not for his native shores and his beloved,
His wife and children dear,
But by the foes of others
For others' cause, and cannot dying say,
"Dear land of mine,
The life thou gavest me I give thee back."
This suffers, of course, in translation, but I confess that in
the original it wears something of the same perfunctory air. His
patriotism was the fever-flame of the sick man's blood; his real
country was the land beyond the grave, and there is a far truer note
in this address to Death.
And thou, that ever from my life's beginning
I have invoked and honored, Beautiful Death! who only
Of all our earthly sorrows knowest pity:
If ever celebrated
Thou wast by me; if ever I attempted
To recompense the insult
That vulgar terror offers
Thy lofty state, delay no more, but listen
To prayers so rarely uttered:
Shut to the light forever,
Sovereign of time, these eyes of weary anguish!
I suppose that Italian criticism of the present day would not give
Leopardi nearly so high a place among the poets as his friend Ranieri
claims for him and his contemporaries accorded.
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