OF THE LADY PIETRA DEGLI SCROVIGNI
by: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
- O the dim
light and the large circle of shade
- I have clomb, and to the whitening of the hills,
- There where we see no color in the grass.
- Natheless my longing loses not its green,
- It has so taken root in the hard stone
- Which talks and hears as though it were a lady.
-
- Utterly frozen is this youthful lady,
- Even as the snow that lies within the shade;
- For she is no more moved than is the stone
- By the sweet season which makes warm the hills
- And alters from afresh from white to green
- Covering their sides again with flowers and grass.
-
- When on her hair she sets a crown of grass
- The thought has no more room for other lady,
- Because she weaves the yellow with the green
- So well that Love sits down there in the shade,--
- Love who has shut me in among low hills
- Faster than between walls of granite-stone.
-
- She is more bright than is a precious stone;
- The wound she gives may not be healed with grass:
- I therefore have fled far o'er plains and hills
- For refuge from so dangerous a lady;
- But from her sunshine nothing can give shade,--
- Not any hill, nor wall, nor summer-green.
-
- A while ago, I saw her dressed in green,--
- So fair, she might have wakened in a stone
- This love which I do feel even for her shade;
- And therefore, as one woos a graceful lady,
- I wooed her in a field that was all grass
- Girdled about with very lofty hills.
-
- Yet shall the streams turn back and climb the hills
- Before Love's flame in this damp wood and green
- Burn, as it burns within a youthful lady,
- For my sake, who would sleep away in stone
- My life, or feed like beasts upon the grass,
- Only to see her garments cast a shade.
-
- How dark so'er the hills throw out their shade,
- Under her summer-green the beautiful lady
- Covers it, like a stone cover'd in grass.
"Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni"
was translated into English by D.G. Rossetti (1828-1882). |
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