TO ITALY

BY VINCENZO DA FILICAJA

Italy!  Italy! thou who’rt doomed to wear
  The fatal gift of beauty, and possess
  The dower funest of infinite wretchedness
  Written upon thy forehead by despair;
Ah! would that thou wert stronger, or less fair. 
  That they might fear thee more, or love thee less,
  Who in the splendor of thy loveliness
  Seem wasting, yet to mortal combat dare! 
Then from the Alps I should not see descending
  Such torrents of armed men, nor Gallic horde
  Drinking the wave of Po, distained with gore,
Nor should I see thee girded with a sword
  Not thine, and with the stranger’s arm contending,
  Victor or vanquished, slave forever more.

SEVEN SONNETS AND A CANZONE [The following translations are from the poems of Michael Angelo as revised by his nephew Michael Angelo the Younger, and were made before the publication of the original text by Guasti.]

I

THE ARTIST

Nothing the greatest artist can conceive
  That every marble block doth not confine
  Within itself; and only its design
  The hand that follows intellect can achieve. 
The ill I flee, the good that I believe,
  In thee, fair lady, lofty and divine,
  Thus hidden lie; and so that death be mine
  Art, of desired success, doth me bereave. 
Love is not guilty, then, nor thy fair face,
  Nor fortune, cruelty, nor great disdain,
  Of my disgrace, nor chance, nor destiny,
If in thy heart both death and love find place
  At the same time, and if my humble brain,
  Burning, can nothing draw but death from thee.

II

FIRE

Not without fire can any workman mould
  The iron to his preconceived design,
  Nor can the artist without fire refine
  And purify from all its dross the gold;
Nor can revive the phoenix, we are told,
  Except by fire.  Hence if such death be mine
  I hope to rise again with the divine,
  Whom death augments, and time cannot make old. 
O sweet, sweet death!  O fortunate fire that burns
  Within me still to renovate my days,
  Though I am almost numbered with the dead! 
If by its nature unto heaven returns
  This element, me, kindled in its blaze,
  Will it bear upward when my life is fled.

III

YOUTH AND AGE

Oh give me back the days when loose and free
  To my blind passion were the curb and rein,
  Oh give me back the angelic face again,
  With which all virtue buried seems to be! 
Oh give my panting footsteps back to me,
  That are in age so slow and fraught with pain,
  And fire and moisture in the heart and brain,
  If thou wouldst have me burn and weep for thee! 
If it be true thou livest alone, Amor,
  On the sweet-bitter tears of human hearts,
  In an old man thou canst not wake desire;
Souls that have almost reached the other shore
  Of a diviner love should feel the darts,
  And be as tinder to a holier fire.