What strange conceits, what fabulous histories
Your aspect made familiar to my mind,
And all your bright companions! in that time
When, silent, seated on the verdant earth,
I whiled so many twilight hours away
Gazing upon the sky, and, listening, heard
The bull-frog chanting in his distant home.
Near me the fire-fly through the hedges gleamed
And o'er the furrows; whispering with the wind
Were alleys overgrown and cypresses

Fragrant in yonder grove; while from this roof
Alternate voices came, the tranquil hum
Of menial labour. Then, what high resolves,
What dreams, the vistas of the sea inspired;
And those blue mountains, dimly visible,
I thought one day to traverse, nursing hope
Of hidden worlds and happiness beyond
Wherein to dwell! unwitting of my fate,
And of the hours when this poor sickly life
I would have bartered gladly for a bier.
Nor any presage gave me then my heart

That, young in days, I should be thus condemned
To wither out my life in this dull town
Among a people ignorant and rude,*

To whom all learning is a senseless jest,

An unknown word fit argument for mirth;

Who hate and shun me, not that envy moves

Their churlish thought-they deem me not their better-
But, though I let no outward sign appear,

They hold that I esteem them less than me.
Here then I pass my years, neglected, lost,
Loveless and lifeless, in my own despite
Harsh to the folly and ill-will I meet;
Stripped of compassion, of the genial warmth
That misery chills; contemner of my kind-
So grown through contemplation of this herd!
Meanwhile, flies from me the sweet time of youth,
Dearer than fame or laurels, dearer far

Than the clear light of day or breath of being :

I lose thee, joylessly, without return,

In this abhorred confine, amidst these ills

O, in the desert of my life, sole flower!

* These strictures would only apply to persons of his own class; towards the peasantry Leopardi is always kind and sympathetic. He was unanimously elected to represent Recanati at Bologna in the abortive Revolution of 1831.

Now, borne upon the wind, the hour-bell's chime
Comes from the tower hard by. Great comfort oft,
I well remember, was that sound to me

In my dark chamber, when, a child, at night
By haunting terrors held, I wakeful lay
And wished the dawn. Nothing I see or hear
About me but recalls some tender image,

Or wakes some sweet remembrance in my mind-
Sweet in itself, though with regret intrudes
Sense of the present, and the vain desire,
Still sad, of bygone joys, the thought: I was.
That arbour turned to meet the sun's last ray,
The painted cattle on those pictured walls,
And rugged weald o'er which the morning breaks,
Brought to my careless hours untold delight,
When, wheresoe'er I went, my potent error
Was ever with me, whispering at my side.
In these old halls, bright from the winter's snow,
About those casements rattling to the wind,
Our sports resounded and the noisy mirth
Of children's voices, in that fraudful time
When the unworthy mystery of things
Puts on alluring airs before our eyes,

And the too credulous youth, like a fond lover,
Sighs for his untried life, and in his mind
Feigns the celestial beauties he admires.

Hopes, tender hopes, delusions of my youth,
Ever discoursing thus I turn to you;
Since, through the intervention of long years,
Other affections, and new paths discerned,
You I may not forget! Honour-I feel-
And glory are but phantoms; our delights,
The good we seek, mere unappeased desire;
Nor has this life one fruit-vain misery!
And, though my lot be empty of all joy,
My mortal state a dark and barren waste,
Fortune takes little from me, I well see.†
But oh! alas! when I look back on you,

My early-cherished hopes, my first sweet dreams,

* Possente errore.' A supposed illusion concerning the possibility of human happiness which dominated the writer's mind in early years. Elsewhere called 'l'antico error, celeste dono,' now only permitted to the young; of old the companion of man through life. See also 'Alla sua donna,' l. 37. + Because, philosophically considered, life at best is so poor a thing; but the poet protests.

And think, of all the promise of that time,
Death is the only hope now left to me,

I feel my heart would break; I feel that never
Shall I find comfort in my destiny.

And when this death, so long invoked, draws near,
And I have reached the end of my mischance;
When earth becomes a stranger's land to me,
And future hours no more beguile my eyes;
Surely you will be present to my mind,

Will cause fresh tears to flow, will make more bitter
The life thus lived in vain, and with regret
Temper the sweetness of that parting day.

At last,

And more than once in the first youthful tumult
Of new contentments, anguish, and desire
I had already called on death; long while
Sat by yon fountain half resolved to end
Sorrow and hope beneath those waves.
Led near the grave by some strange malady,
I wept my youth, the flower of my poor days
So early blasted, and, through the late hours,
Oft seated on my conscious bed beside
A feeble lamp, in plaintive elegy,
Lamented with the silence and with Night
The spirit that seemed eager for release,
And faintly sang my own funereal chant.

Who can remember you without a sigh,

O first approach of youth, O happy days,
Sweet, inexpressible, when one so ravisht
First sees love smile on him from maiden's eyes;
When all things, emulous, appear to smile
And envy sleeps or, pitiful, is mute;

When, to his new-found guest (unwonted wonder!)
The World holds forth almost a helping hand,
Excuses faults, makes holiday, bows low,

And shows he would receive and hail him lord? Fleet days, that vanish like the lightning's gleam,

Who can be truly ignorant of sorrow

For whom this radiant season is no more-
If youth, alas for youth, if youth be spent?

O Nerina! of thee haply I hear

These haunts no longer speak? Faded perhaps Out of my mind art thou? Where art thou gone, Sweetest, that nothing but remembrances

I find of thee? Alas, this natal earth

Shall see thee not again. That little window

Where thou wert wont to talk with me, and where
Glitters the starlight sadly glimmering now,

Is desolate. Where art thou that I hear
Thy voice no more resounding as of old
When every distant accent from thy lips

That reached me urged the warm blood to my cheek?
Fled is that time. Thy days, so sweet to me,
Are past. Thou'rt gone. And others tread the earth,
And have their dwelling mid these fragrant hills.
Brief was thy stay, and like a dream thy life,
To which thou cam'st as in some jocund measure,
With lightsome step, joy shining from thy brow,
While in thine eyes hope undiminished beamed-
The light of youth-when they were quenched by Fate
And low thou liest. Ah Nerina! yet reigns
The old love in my heart; and if at times
I go where others meet in festal guise,
Then to myself I say: O Nerina,

No more dost thou adorn thee for the dance!
Thou com'st not now where others gaily meet.
If May return and lovers with glad voices
Go carrying sweet boughs to their loves again,
I say: Nerina mine, for thee no more
Returns the spring; returns not gentle love.
With every sunny day, each fair hillside
I gaze on, every pleasure that I feel,

I say: Nerina is not glad, she sees

No smiling meadows, heeds not the light air.
Alas! thou art gone, thou, my eternal sigh,*

Art gone from me, and, with all pleasant thought,
Each dear emotion, every tender joy,

Sorrow, or sad sweet pleading of the heart,
Mingles the sharpness of that memory.'

The utterance of so much sorrow seems for a short space to have banished the cloud of melancholy from Leopardi's mind. His next effusions-the following little

Cf. Pope,Essay on Man,' Ep. IV:

'That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die.'

idyl, and the longer piece from which the succeeding excerpt is taken-belong to a very different class, and remind us of our own Crabbe in closeness and tenderness of observation. They give a pleasing picture of peasant life, and harvest or vintage festivals, a century ago. We may imagine Nerina to have been the young girl bringing flowers, gathered in the fields on her way home, for the next day's fête. They are perhaps the least sad, the brightest and pleasantest, to be found in the 'Canti,' and it is fortunate they fall within the period under review.

'The Village Saturday.

(Composed Sept. 29, 1829).

Comes now the cottage maiden

From the meadows, while the evening shadows fall,
Her basket trimly laden at her side;

In her hand are posies,

Violets and roses,

For tomorrow is the village festival,

And with them she will deck her breast and hair.
Sits spinning on the stair

The aged crone, good neighbours near attending;
Her face is to the side where sets the sun.

They hear her tell how she

Could brisk and merry be

In her young time, when, upon festal days,
She too adorned herself with flowers at eve,
And tript it gaily with the friends she had,
As young companions, in that age more fair.
Meanwhile the dusky air

Grows darker still, and soon

The sky puts on a robe of deeper blue;

Their shadows now the roofs and hills renew

Beneath the rising moon.

The merry bell rings out
Glad presage for tomorrow;
Respite from daily sorrow
May with that sound begin.

The boys with whoop and shout

The welcome signal greet,

Come capering through the street,

And make a joyful din.

Home to his frugal meal the labourer goes

Whistling, and thinks but of the day's repose,