The Quarterly Review

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.

severely that a report of his death was at one time generally believed, and the letters written by him during these months are pitiful in the extreme, reminding one of Tasso's lamentations, addressed to all quarters of Italy from his prison in Ferrara. But there is evident relief that the cloud mentioned in Il Risorgimento' had passed away; and the poems which belong to this period are second to none in the 'Canti.'

The poem that follows, Memories,' as the name implies, is a record of Leopardi's previous life, the greater part of which had been passed at home. It savours of the soil of Recanati, and little imagination is required to conjure up the scenes pictured to us in the verse. Heard in the original, each successive mood of the poet is so melodiously conveyed that one seems to be listening to a symphony by some famous composer; and, although less violent, the successive moods and emotions played on with such admirable taste and feeling change as frequently, yet far more artfully, than those awakened in the breast of Alexander by the rival of St Cecilia. Blank verse, always handled by Leopardi with great skill, though weakened in Italian by the addition of an eleventh syllable, is the medium employed, reducing the difficulty of transference to our idiom to a minimum. The selfportraiture is more complete here than in any other of the odes. Lovers of Pope will recognise an old friend towards the close of 'Le Ricordanze' (see below, p. 24), a jewel three words long to which a splendid setting is accorded (eterno sospiro mio). And indeed it is an eternal sigh that comes from the soul of this 'delicate Ariel' imprisoned in a body which he must have found as much a thing of torment as the pine tree, chosen by Caliban for the abode of Shakespeare's most ethereal creation.

Le Ricordanze * (Memories).

Stars of the radiant Bear, I little thought,
Communing with you nightly as of old,
To find you shining o'er my father's garden
And from these windows greet you yet again,
Hither returned, where I in childhood dwelt
And saw the end of every joy once mine.

First published in the Florentine edition of 1831; composed at Recanati between Aug. 26 and Sept. 12, some months after Leopardi's return in 1829,

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

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.t
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.