Dedication xiii
To Italy 1
On Dante’s Monument 7
To Angelo Mai 15
To His Sister Paolina 23
To a Victor in the Game of _Pallone_ 27
The Younger Brutus 30
To the Spring 35
Hymn to the Patriarchs 40
The Last Song of Sappho 45
First Love 48
The Lonely Sparrow 53
The Infinite 56
The Evening of the Holiday 57
To The Moon 59
The Dream 60
The Lonely Life 64
Consalvo 68
To the Beloved 74
To Count Carlo Pepoli 77
The Resurrection 84
To Sylvia 92
Recollections 95
Night-Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia 102
Calm after Storm 108
The Village Saturday-Night 110
The Ruling Thought 113
Love and Death 119
To Himself 124
Aspasia 125
On an Old Sepulchral Bas-Relief 130
On the Portrait of a Beautiful Woman 135
Palinodia 138
The Setting of the Moon 149
The Ginestra 152
Imitation 165
Scherzo 166
Fragments 167
Dedication.
[From the first Florentine Edition of the Poems, in the year 1831.]
To my Friends in Tuscany:
My dear Friends, I dedicate this book to you, in which, as is
oft the case with Poets, I have sought to illustrate my sorrow,
and with which I now—I cannot say it without tears—take leave
of Literature and of my studies. I hoped these dear studies would
have been the consolation of my old age, and thought, after having
lost all the other joys and blessings of childhood and of youth,
I had secured _one_, of which no power, no unhappiness could rob
me. But I was scarcely twenty years old, when that weakness of
nerves and of stomach, which has destroyed my life, and yet gives
me no hope of death, robbed that only blessing of more than half
its value, and, in my twenty-eighth year, has utterly deprived
me of it, and, as I _must_ think, forever. I have not been able
to read these pages, and have been compelled to entrust their
revision to other eyes and other hands. I will utter no more
complaints, my dear friends; the consciousness of the depth of my
affliction admits not of complaints and lamentations. I have lost
all; I am a withered branch, that feels and suffers still. _You_
only have I won! Your society, which must compensate me for all
my studies, joys, and hopes, would almost outweigh my sorrows,
did not my very sickness prevent me from enjoying it as I could
wish, and did I not know that Fate will soon deprive me of this
benefit, also, and will compel me to spend the remainder of my
days, far from all the delights of civilized life, in a spot,
far better suited to the dead than to the living. Your love,
meanwhile, will ever follow me, and will yet cling to me, perhaps,
when this body, which, indeed, no longer lives, shall be turned
to ashes. Farewell! Your
Leopardi.