Ardent Italian, do you never tire
of raising our ancestors
from the tomb? Of bringing them
to speak to this dead age overcast
with such clouds of boredom? Why do they come
to our ears so strongly now, so often,
those ancient voices of ours,
mute for so long? Why so many
resurrections? In a fecund lightning-flash
their pages come: for this age alone
the dusty cloisters
have kept safe the sacred, generous
words of our ancestors. What courage,
zealous Italian, does fate inspire in you?
Or perhaps fate fights with mortal courage in vain?

      Surely it must be by the gods’ high counsel,
when our desperate neglect
is duller and deeper, each moment,
almost, that strikes us with our ancestors’
fresh calls. The heavens are still
faithful to Italy: some immortal
still cares for us:
and since now or never is the time
to trust ourselves to the disused
powers of our native Italy,
we hear how great the clamour is
from the tombs, and why the soil reveals
these forgotten heroes,
asking at this late hour if you
delight, our country, in cowardice.

      O glorious one, do you still nourish
hopes of us? Are we not
wholly ruined? Perhaps the future’s
not unknown to you? I am distraught,
with no refuge from grief, what will be
is hidden from me, and what I see
is such that it makes hope seem
a folly and a dream. Noble spirits,
a foul, dishonourable crew succeed
to your place: in your blood,
every worth of work or word
is mocked: no longer shame or envy
of your lasting fame: neglect
surrounds your monuments: and we
have become a base example for future ages.

      Noblest of minds, now no one else cares
about our high ancestry,
it falls to you, on whom fate breathes
kindly, to you, to offer up with both hands
those former times, when the ancients raised
their heads out of dark oblivion,
with the buried arts,
those godlike ancestors to whom nature
spoke without unveiling, in whom was enclosed
the generous calm of Rome and Athens.
Oh ages, oh ages lost
in eternal sleep, when Italy’s ruin
was incomplete, when we disdained
base idleness, and the wind in flight
drew sparks more intensely from this soil.

      Your sacred ashes were still warm,
Dante, unconquered enemy
of fortune, to whose grief and scorn
Hell was friendlier than earth.
Hell: is that not a better place
than this? And the sweet strings
still trembled, Petrarch,
unhappy lover, from the touch
of your hand. Ah, Italian poetry
was born in sadness. Yet the ills
that grieve us are lighter and hurt less
than the boredom that drowns us. Oh you,
blessed ones, to whom life was tears! Irritation
binds our swaddling bands: for us, by the cradle
and above the tomb, sits motionless nullity.

      While all your life, Colombus, ardent son
of Liguria, was with stars and sea,
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and lands
where men thought they heard the waves
hiss as they quenched the sun, committed
to the infinite swell, you found the rays
of fallen Sol once more, and the daylight
born again there, as ours merged with the deep:
and, overcoming all Nature’s barriers,
an immense and unknown land was the glory
of your voyage, and your return
with all its risks. Ah, but the world does not
grow greater by being known, it grows less,
and the sounding air, the kindly earth, the sea
seem vaster to the child than the learned man.

      Where have our happy dreams gone,
the unknown harbours
of unknown peoples, the diurnal
houses of the stars, the young Aurora’s
remote bed, and the hidden nocturnal
sleep of the greatest planet?
See they vanish in a moment,
the world’s captured on a flimsy chart:
see, all’s the same, and only nothingness
grows by discovery. O dear imaginings,
you’re denied us
when truth arrives: our minds separate
from you forever: the years part us
from your first stupendous powers:
and the solace for our pain disappears.

      You, Ariosto, meanwhile, were born to sweet
dreams, and the primal sun, shone
on your face, carefree singer of love and arms,
who filled life with happy illusions,
in an age less sad than ours:
Italy’s new hope. O chambers, O towers,
O ladies, O cavaliers,
O gardens, O palaces, thinking of you,
my mind is lost in a thousand
empty pleasures. Vanities, lovely follies,
and strange thoughts,
filled human life: what remains, now the leaves
are stripped from things? Only the certainty
of seeing all is empty, except sadness.

      O Tasso, Tasso, then heaven prepared
your excellent mind for us:
weeping and little else for you.
Oh sad Torquato! The sweet song
could not solace you, or melt the ice
your soul possessed, once warm
but chilled by hatred, fouled
by the envy of tyrant and citizen. Love,
Amor, abandoned you, that last deception
of our life. Nothingness seemed real,
a solid shade to you, and the world
an empty wasteland. Your eyes were not raised
to tardy honours: the last hour was mercy
not ruin for you. He who knows our ills
asks for death and not a laurel wreath.

      If you wish for anguish, return,
return to us, rise
from the mute and melancholy tomb,
O sad example of misfortune. Our life
grows worse than that which seemed
so wicked and so dark to you. O dear one,
who will sympathise with you
when no one cares for any but himself?
Who, today, would not call your mortal anguish
foolish, now everything great and rare
is called madness:
when something worse than envy,
indifference, greets the highest? O who
when measure rather than poetry reigns,
would offer you the laurel wreath once more?

      O unfortunate spirit, from your time
until now only one Italian
with a famous name has risen
above his shameful and cowardly age,
Alfieri, the fierce Piedmontese, to whom
heaven, not this waste and arid land
of mine, gave a heart of manly courage:
he alone, unarmed (ardent memory!) made war
on tyrants through the drama: the world
at least was given
that pitiful conflict, that vain field
for impotent anger. He was the first to enter
that arena, and no one followed, since now neglect
and brutish silence have wholly crushed us.

      He passed his entire life, immaculate,
angry and disdainful,
and death saw him escape the worst.
Vittorio, this was not the place or time
for you. Other ages, other regions
are needed for noble minds. Now
we live content with inaction,
led by mediocrity: the wise have fallen
and the crowd have risen to form this single space
where the world is levelled. O famous explorer,
go on: wake the dead,
now that the living are asleep: arm the mute
tongues of former heroes: so that, at last,
this age of mud may either stir to life, and rise
to noble action, or sink in shame.