Tasso Dying
What festival is ancient Rome preparing?
Where flow the crowds in noisy waves?
Why these aromas, myrrh's sweet smoke
And censers all around abrim with fragrant herbs?
From Capitoline Hill to Tiber's waves,
Above universal city's streets,
Why are the priceless rugs and purple stuffs
Spread among garlands, laurels?
Why all this noise? The crash and thump of timpani?
Are these heralds of joy or triumph?
Why wearing the miter hastes the holy father
With gonfalon to the prayer house?
For whom doth thankful Rome's most valued gift,
The crown, in his hands shimmer?
For whom this triumph? - 'tis for you, o blessed bard!
For you this gift... Jerusalem's bard!
And now the joyful noise has reached the cell,
Where Death joins battle with Torquatto,
Where death's winged spirit swoops
Above the sufferer's blessed head.
Not weeping friends, nor praying monks,
Nor honor's late rewards
Can tame the iron hand of fate,
Which knows no mercy for the great.
Half-dead, he sees the horrid hour,
And blesses it with joy,
And parting with life, one final time,
The wondrous swan exclaims:
"My friends, O let me catch a glimpse of splendid Rome,
Where a too early grave awaits the bard!
Allow my glance to meet your hills and smoke,
O, ancient sepulcher of citizens!
O blessed land of heroes and of wonders!
Dust eloquent and ruins!
Azure and purple of cloudless skies,
You, poplars; and you, ancient olives.
Eternal Tiber, you, who slake the thirst of every tribe,
Sown with a universe of bones.
Doomed to an early end.
I greet you from within these dreary walls!
It's done! I stand before the fatal borne
To wild applause I won't step on Capitoline,
And glory's laurels on my feeble head
Won't sweeten the bard's frightful lot.
From youth I have been everybody's puppet.
I was an exile as a child,
I wandered, a poor traveler
Under the sweet Italian sky,
[...] Read more
poem by Konstantin Nikolaevich Batiushkov
Added by Poetry Lover
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