The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi | Page 9

sons?Of Romulus with holy wrath inflamed;?Behold the tyrants locks with dust besmeared;?In sluggish breasts once more?The sacred name of Liberty revered;?Behold o'er all the subjugated earth,?The troops of Latium march triumphant forth,?From torrid desert to the gloomy pole.?And thus eternal Rome,?That had so long in sloth oblivious lain,?A daughter's sacrifice revives again.
TO A VICTOR IN THE GAME OF PALLONE.
The face of glory and her pleasant voice,?O fortunate youth, now recognize,?And how much nobler than effeminate sloth?Are manhood's tested energies.?Take heed, O generous champion, take heed,?If thou thy name by worthy thought or deed,?From Time's all-sweeping current couldst redeem;?Take heed, and lift thy heart to high desires!?The amphitheatre's applause, the public voice,?Now summon thee to deeds illustrious;?Exulting in thy lusty youth.?In thee, to-day, thy country dear?Beholds her heroes old again appear.
_His_ hand was ne'er with blood barbaric stained,?At Marathon,?Who on the plain of Elis could behold?The naked athletes, and the wrestlers bold,?And feel no glow of emulous zeal within,?The laurel wreath of victory to win.?And he, who in Alph?us stream did wash?The dusty manes and foaming flanks?Of his victorious mares, _he_ best could lead?The Grecian banners and the Grecian swords?Against the flying, panic-stricken ranks?Of Medes, who, dying, Asia's shore?And great Euphrates will behold no more.
And will you call that vain, which seeks?The latent sparks of virtue to evolve,?Or animate anew to high resolve,?The drooping fervor of our weary souls??What but a game have mortal works e'er been,?Since Phoebus first his weary wheels did urge??And is not truth, no less than falsehood, vain??And yet, with pleasing phantoms, fleeting shows,?Nature herself to our relief has come;?And custom, aiding nature, still must strive?These strong illusions to revive;?Or else all thirst for noble deeds is gone,?Is lost in sloth, and blind oblivion.
The time may come, perchance, when midst?The ruins of Italian palaces,?Will herds of cattle graze,?And all the seven hills the plough will feel;?Not many years will have elapsed, perchance,?E'er all the towns of Italy?Will the abode of foxes be,?And dark groves murmur 'mid the lofty walls;?Unless the Fates from our perverted minds?Remove this sad oblivion of the Past;?And heaven by grateful memories appeased,?Relenting, in the hour of our despair,?The abject nations, ripe for slaughter, spare.
But thou, O worthy youth, wouldst grieve,?Thy wretched country to survive.?Thou once through her mightst have acquired renown,?When on her brow she wore the glittering crown,?Now lost! Our fault, and Fate's! That time is o'er;?Ah, such a mother who could honor, more??But for thyself, O lift thy thoughts on high!?What is our life? A thing to be despised:?Least wretched, when with perils so beset,?It must, perforce, its wretched self forget,?Nor heed the flight of slow-paced, worthless hours;?Or, when, to Lethe's dismal shore impelled,?It hath once more the light of day beheld.
THE YOUNGER BRUTUS.
When in the Thracian dust uprooted lay,?In ruin vast, the strength of Italy,?And Fate had doomed Hesperia's valleys green,?And Tiber's shores,?The trampling of barbarian steeds to feel,?And from the leafless groves,?On which the Northern Bear looks down,?Had called the Gothic hordes,?That Rome's proud walls might fall before their swords;?Exhausted, wet with brothers' blood,?Alone sat Brutus, in the dismal night;?Resolved on death, the gods implacable?Of heaven and hell he chides,?And smites the listless, drowsy air?With his fierce cries of anger and despair.
"O foolish virtue, empty mists,?The realms of shadows, are thy schools,?And at thy heels repentance follows fast.?To you, ye marble gods?(If ye in Phlegethon reside, or dwell?Above the clouds), a mockery and scorn?Is the unhappy race,?Of whom you temples ask,?And fraudulent the law that you impose.?Say, then, does earthly piety provoke?The anger of the gods??O Jove, dost thou protect the impious??And when the storm-cloud rushes through the air,?And thou thy thunderbolts dost aim,?Against the _just_ dost thou impel the sacred flame??Unconquered Fate and stern necessity?Oppress the feeble slaves of Death:?Unable to avert their injuries,?The common herd endure them patiently.?But is the ill less hard to bear,?Because it has no remedy??Does he who knows no hope no sorrow feel??The hero wages war with thee,?Eternal deadly war, ungracious Fate,?And knows not how to yield; and thy right hand,?Imperious, proudly shaking off,?E'en when it weighs upon him most,?Though conquered, is triumphant still,?When his sharp sword inflicts the fatal blow;?And seeks with haughty smile the shades below.
"Who storms the gates of Tartarus,?Offends the gods.?Such valor does not suit, forsooth,?Their soft, eternal bosoms; no??Or are our toils and miseries,?And all the anguish of our hearts,?A pleasant sport, their leisure to beguile??Yet no such life of crime and wretchedness,?But pure and free as her own woods and fields,?Nature to us prescribed; a queen?And goddess once. Since impious custom, now,?Her happy realm hath scattered to the winds,?And other laws on this poor life imposed,?Will Nature of fool-hardiness accuse?The manly souls, who such a life refuse?
"Of crime, and their own sufferings ignorant,?Serene old age the beasts conducts?Unto the death they ne'er foresee.?But if, by misery impelled,