Giacomo Leopardi

The poems of the Canti below are complete but not in their originally published order. I have taken the liberty of re-arranging them into four groups, Personal (Poems 1-11), Philosophical (12-24), ‘Romantic’ (25-34), and Political (35-41). These categories are not exact, as Leopardi frequently blends elements together in the one poem, but they may help the reader, as they helped me, to adjust to his variations in style. The original published position of each poem is given in Roman numerals in the brackets following the poem’s title.

1. To Silvia (XXI)

Silvia, do you remember

those moments, in your mortal life,

when beauty still shone

in your sidelong, laughing eyes,

and you, light and thoughtful,

leapt beyond girlhood’s limits?

The quiet rooms and the streets

around you, sounded

to your endless singing,

when you sat, happily content,

intent on that woman’s work,

the vague future, arriving alive in your mind.

It was the scented May, and that’s how

you spent your day.

I would leave my intoxicating studies,

and the turned-down pages,

where my young life,

the best of me, was left,

and from the balcony of my father’s house

strain to catch the sound of your voice,

and your hand, quick,

running over the loom.

I’d look at the serene sky,

the gold lit gardens and paths:

this side the mountains, that side the far-off sea.

And human tongue cannot say

what I felt then.

What sweet thoughts,

what hope, what hearts, O my Silvia!

How all human life and fate

appeared to us then!

When I recall that hope

such feelings pain me,

harsh, disconsolate,

I brood on my own destiny.

Oh Nature, Nature

why do you not give now

what you promised then? Why

do you so deceive your children?

Attacked, and conquered, by secret disease,

you died, my tenderest one, and did not see

your years flower, or feel your heart moved,

by sweet praise of your black hair

your shy, loving looks.

No friends talked with you,

on holidays, about love.

My sweet hopes died also

little by little: to me too

Fate has denied those years.

Oh, how you’ve passed me by,

dear friend of my new life,

my saddened hope!

Is this the world, the dreams,

the loves, events, delights,

we spoke about so much together?

Is this our human life?

At the advance of Truth

you fell, unhappy one,

and from the distance,

with your hand you pointed

towards death’s coldness and the silent grave.

2. The Infinite (XII)

It was always dear to me, this solitary hill,

and this hedgerow here, that closes off my view,

from so much of the ultimate horizon.

But sitting here, and watching here,

in thought, I create interminable spaces,

greater than human silences, and deepest

quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.

When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves,

I go on to compare that infinite silence

with this voice, and I remember the eternal

and the dead seasons, and the living present,

and its sound, so that in this immensity

my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck

seems sweet to me in this sea.

3. The Evening Of The Holiday (XIII)

The night is sweet and clear, without a breeze,

and the moon rests in the gardens,

calm on the roofs, and reveals, clear,

far off, every mountain. O my lady,

the paths are still, and the night lights

shine here and there from the balconies:

you sleep, and sleep gently welcomed you

to your quiet room: nothing

troubles you: you still don’t know, or guess

with how deep a wound you’ve hurt my heart.

You sleep: I gaze at the sky

that seems so kind to my eyes:

gaze on ancient all-powerful Nature,

who created me for pain. She said:

‘I refuse you hope, even hope, and may

your eyes not shine, except with tears.’

Today was holy: now rest

from pleasure, remember in dream, perhaps,

how many you liked today, how many

liked you: not I, it’s not I that hope

to fill your thoughts. Instead I ask

what life has left me, throw myself

to earth, cry out, and tremble: oh,

terrible days of green youth! Ah, on the road

nearby, I hear the solitary song

of the worker returning to his poor

lodging, late, after the revels:

and it grips my heart fiercely

to think the whole world passes,

and scarcely leaves a trace. See: the holiday’s

over: some nondescript day follows:

time carries off all mortal things.

Where now’s the sound of all those

ancient peoples? Where are the cries

of our famous ancestors, Rome’s

vast empire, its weapons, the clash

of arms, crossing land and sea?

All’s peace and silence: the world

rests entirely, and we speak of them no more.

Now I remember, in my young days,

when the longed-for holiday was awaited,

how, once it had passed, I lay, in sadness,

pressed tight to my sheets: and, deep in the night,

a song I heard in the streets,

died, little by little, far off,

crushing my heart, as now.

4. To the Moon (XIV)

O lovely moon, now I’m reminded

how almost a year since, full of anguish,

I climbed this hill to gaze at you again,

and you hung there, over that wood, as now,

clarifying all things. Filled with mistiness,

trembling, that’s how your face seemed to me,

with all those tears that welled in my eyes, so

troubled was my life, and is, and does not change,

O moon, my delight. And yet it does help me,

to record my sadness and tell it, year by year.

Oh how sweetly it hurts, when we are young,

when hope has such a long journey to run,

and memory is so short,

this remembrance of things past, even if it

is sad, and the pain lasts!

5. Saturday Night In The Village (XXV)

The girl comes from the fields,

at sunset,

carrying her sheaf of grass: in her fingers

a bunch of violets and roses:

she’s ready, as before,

to wreathe her hair and bodice,

for tomorrow’s holiday.

The old woman sits spinning,

facing the dying sunlight,

on the stairway, with her neighbours,

telling the tale of her own young days,

when she dressed for the festival,

and still slim and lovely,

danced all evening, with those young

boys, companions of her fairer season.

Already the whole sky darkens,

the air turns deep blue: already

shadows of hills and roofs return,

on the young moon’s pale rising.

Now the bells are witness

to the coming holiday:

you would say the heart

might take comfort from the sound.

A gang of little boys

shout in the tiny square,

leaping here and there,

making a happy din:

and the farmhand, whistling,

returns for his simple meal,

dreams of his day of rest.

When the other lights are quenched, all round,

and everything else is silent,

I hear the hammer ringing, I hear

the carpenter sawing: he’s still awake

in the lamplight, in his shut workshop,

hurrying and straining,

to finish his task before dawn.

This is the best of the seven days,

full of hope and joy:

tomorrow the hours will bring

anxiety and sadness, and make each

turn, in thought, to their accustomed toil.

Lively boy,

your life’s sweet flowering

is like this day of gladness,

a clear day, unclouded,

that heralds life’s festival.

Enjoy the sweet hour, my child,

this pleasant, delightful season.

I’ll say nothing, more: let it not grieve you

if your holiday, like mine, is slow to arrive.

6. To Himself (XXVIII)

Now you’ll rest forever

my weary heart. The last illusion has died

I thought eternal. Died. I feel, in truth,

not only hope, but desire

for dear illusion has vanished.

Rest forever. You’ve laboured

enough. Not a single thing is worth

your beating: the earth’s not worthy

of your sighs. Bitter and tedious,

life is, nothing more: and the world is mud.

Be silent now. Despair

for the last time. To our race Fate

gave only death. Now scorn Nature,

that brute force

that secretly governs the common hurt,

and the infinite emptiness of all.

7. Night-Song Of A Wandering Shepherd of Asia (XXIII)

Why are you there, Moon, in the sky? Tell me

why you are there, silent Moon.

You rise at night, and go

contemplating deserts: then you set.

Are you not sated yet

with riding eternal roads?

Are you not weary, still wishing

to gaze at these valleys?

It mirrors your life,

the life of a shepherd.

He rises at dawn:

he drives his flock over the fields, sees

the flocks, the streams, the grass:

tired at evening he rests:

expecting nothing more.

Tell me, O Moon, what life is

worth to a shepherd, or

your life to you? Tell me: where

does my brief wandering lead,

or your immortal course?

Like an old man, white-haired, infirm,

barefoot and half-naked,

with a heavy load on his shoulders,

running onwards, panting,

over mountains, through the valleys,

on sharp stones, in sand and thickets,

wind and storm, when the days burn

and when they freeze,

through torrents and marshes,

falling, rising, running faster,

faster, without rest or pause,

torn, bleeding: till he halts

where all his efforts,

all the roads, have led:

a dreadful, vast abyss

into which he falls, headlong, forgetting all.

Virgin Moon,

such is the life of man.

Man is born in labour:

and there’s a risk of death in being born.

The very first things he learns

are pain and anguish: from the first

his mother and father

console him for being born.

Then as he grows

they both support him, go on

trying, with words and actions,

to give him heart,

console him merely for being human:

there’s nothing kinder

a parent can do for a child.

Yet why bring one who needs

such comforting to life,

and then keep him alive?

If life is a misfortune,

why grant us such strength?

Such is the human condition,

inviolate Moon.

But you who are not mortal,

care little, maybe, for my words.

Yet you, lovely, eternal wanderer,

so pensive, perhaps you understand

this earthly life,

this suffering, the sighs that exist:

what this dying is, this last

fading of our features,

the vanishing from earth, the losing

all familiar, loving company.

And you must understand

the ‘why’ of things, and view the fruits

of morning, evening,

silence, endless passing time.

You know (you must) at what sweet love

of hers the springtime smiles,

the use of heat, and whom the winter

benefits with frost.

You know a thousand things, reveal

a thousand things still hidden from a simple shepherd.

Often as I gaze at you

hanging so silently, above the empty plain

that the sky confines with its far circuit:

or see you steadily

follow me and my flock:

or when I look at the stars blazing in the sky,

musing I say to myself:

‘What are these sparks,

this infinite air, this deep

infinite clarity? What does this

vast solitude mean? And what am I?’

So I question. About these

magnificent, immeasurable mansions,

and their innumerable family:

and the steady urge, the endless motion

of all celestial and earthly things,

circling without rest,

always returning to their starting place:

I can’t imagine

their use or fruit. But you, deathless maiden,

I’m sure, know everything.

This I know, and feel,

that others, perhaps, may gain

benefit and comfort from

the eternal spheres, from

my fragile being: but to me life is evil.

O flock at peace, O happy creatures,

I think you have no knowledge of your misery!

How I envy you!

Not only because

you’re almost free of worries:

quickly forgetting all hardship,

every hurt, each deep fear:

but because you never know tedium.

When you lie in the shade, on the grass,

you’re peaceful and content:

and you spend most of the year

untroubled, in that state.

If I sit on the grass, in the shade,

weariness clouds my mind,

and, as if a thorn pricked me,

sitting there I’m still further

from finding peace and rest.

Yet there’s nothing I need,

and I’ve known no reason for tears.

I can’t say what you enjoy

or why: but you’re fortunate.

O my flock: there’s little still

I enjoy, and that’s not all I regret.

If you could speak, I’d ask you:

‘Tell me, why are all creatures

at peace, idle, lying

in sweet ease: why, if I lie down

to rest, does boredom seize me?’

If I had wings, perhaps,

to fly above the clouds,

and count the stars, one by one,

or roam like thunder from crest to crest,

I’d be happier, my sweet flock,

I’d be happier, bright moon.

Or perhaps my thought

strays from truth, gazing at others’ fate:

perhaps whatever form, whatever state

it’s in, its cradle or its fold,

the day of birth is dark to one that’s born.

8. First Love (X)

My thoughts turn to the day when I felt love

war in me, for the first time, and I said:

‘Ah, if this is love, how it torments me!’

When, with eyes fixed wholly on the ground,

I marvelled at her, she who was first to open,

all innocent, the passage to my heart.

Ah, Love, how badly you’ve treated me!

Why does such sweet affection bring

so much desire, and so much grief?

And why did such delight enter my heart

not serenely, not entire and pure,

but filled with agony and trouble?

Tell me, gentle heart, what fear

what anguish entered with that thought,

compared with which all pleasures were annoyance?

Fulfilling thought that offered up yourself,

in the day and night, when all things seem

to be at peace in this hemisphere,

you troubled me, unquiet, happy,

wretched, lying beneath the covers,

throbbing strongly at every moment.

And whenever, sad, afflicted, weary,

I closed my eyes in sleep: sleep vanished

consumed by fever and delirium.

Oh how the sweet vision rose, living,

among the shadows, my closed eyes

gazing at it beneath my eyelids!

Oh, how that sweetest of motions spread

through my bones, oh, how a thousand

confused thoughts rolled through

my trembling soul! As a breeze, flows

through the heights of an ancient forest,

and creates a long, uncertain murmuring.

And oh, my heart, while I was silent, while

I failed to struggle, what did you say, as she departed,

she the source of pain and throbbing?

I’d no sooner felt the burning

of that blaze of love, than the little breeze

that fanned the flame, flew on its way.

I lay there sleepless in the dawn,

and heard those horses, that would leave me lost,

stamping their hooves outside my ancestral home.

And I, secret, timid, and unsure, turned

my eager hearing, eyes open in vain,

towards the balcony in the darkness,

to hear the last words, that might fall

from her lips: to hear that voice:

alas, since heaven took all else away.

The servants’ voices often struck

my doubting ear, and a chill took me,

and my heart beat more fiercely!

And when that dear voice finally sank

into my heart, mixed with the sounds

of carriage wheels and horses:

I was left deserted, huddled trembling

on my bed, and, eyes closed, pressed

my hand to my heart and sighed.

Later, stupefied, dragging my

shaking limbs round the silent room,

I said: ‘What else could ever move my heart?’

Then the bitterest memory

rooted in my mind, and closed my heart

to all other voices, every other form.

And a deep grief searched my breast,

as when the heavens rain widely,

washing the fields with melancholy.

Nor did I, a boy of eighteen summers

recognise you, Love, when you first tried

your power on one born to weep.

When I scorned every joy, and the stars’

smiles did not please, not dawn’s

calm silence, not green fields.

Even the love of glory was silent

in my heart that it used to warm,

where once love of beauty lived.

My eyes would not return to my studies,

and that which I thought had made

all other desires vain, seemed vain itself.

Ah how could I have altered so, in myself,

how had one love taken all others from me?

Ah, in truth, how changeable we are!

Only my heart pleased, and that

perpetual dialogue buried in my heart,

keeping a guard on grief.

And my eyes that searched the earth or myself,

and allowed no fugitive or wandering glance

to light on any face, vile or lovely:

fearing to disturb the bright, virgin

image that I held in my heart, as waves

in a lake may be stirred by the breeze.

And that regret, for not having fully

delighted in fleeting days,

that weighs on the spirit,

changing to poison past delight,

stung my heart wholly: while shame

with its harsh bite still had no power.

I swear to heaven, to you, great spirits,

that there was no low desire in my heart:

it burned with pure, unblemished fire.

That fire still lives, affection lives,

the lovely image breathes in my thought,

from which I draw no delight that is not

heavenly, and that, alone, satisfies me.

9. The Solitary Bird (XI)

Solitary bird, you sing

from the crest of the ancient tower

to the landscape, while day dies:

while music wanders the valley.

Spring brightens

the air around, exults in the fields,

so the heart is moved to see it.

Flocks are bleating, herds are lowing:

more birds happily make a thousand

circles in the clear sky, all around,

celebrating these happy times:

you gaze pensively, apart, at it all:

no companions, and no flight,

no pleasures call you, no play:

you sing, and so see out

the year, the sweet flowering of your life.

Ah, how like

your ways to mine! Pleasure and Joy

youth’s sweet companions,

and, Love, its dear friend,

sighing, bitter at passing days,

I no longer care for them, I don’t know why:

indeed I seem to fly far from them:

seem to wander, a stranger

in my native place,

in the springtime of my life.

This day, yielding to evening now,

is a holiday in our town.

You can hear a bell ring in the clear sky,

you can hear the cannon’s iron thunder,

echoing away, from farm to farm.

Dressed for the festival

young people here

leave the houses, fill the streets,

to see and be seen, with happy hearts.

I go out, alone,

into the distant country,

postpone all delight and joy

to some other day: and meanwhile

my gaze takes in the clear air,

brings me the sun that sinks and vanishes

among the distant mountains,

after the cloudless day, and seems to say,

that the beauty of youth diminishes.

You, lonely bird, reaching the evening

of this life the stars grant you,

truly, cannot regret

your existence: since your every

action is born of nature.

But I, if I can’t

evade through prayer,

the detested threshold of old age,

when these eyes will be dumb to others,

and the world empty, and the future

darker and more irksome than the present,

what will I think of such desires?

Of these years of mine? Of what happened?

Ah I’ll repent, and often,

un-consoled, I’ll gaze behind me.

10. Imitation (XXXV)

Poor frail leaf

far from your own branch,

where are you flying? – The wind

tore me from the beech that bore me.

Whirling, in flight, it takes me

from the forest to the plain,

from the valley to the mountain.

I myself journey

forever: ignoring all the rest.

I go where all things go,

where, of nature, goes

the flower of the rose,

and the flower of the laurel.

Note: The original French poem is by Antoine-Vincent Arnault (1766-1834)

11. Scherzo (XXXVI)

When as a boy I set myself

to learn from the Muses,

one of them grasped me by the hand

and all that day

led me around,

to contemplate her workshop.

Little by little she showed me

the instruments of her art,

and all their diverse uses

the effect of each of them

when they’re employed in prose

or they’re employed in verses.

I marvelled, and I said:

‘And Muse, your file?’ The Goddess

said: ‘Worn out: we do without it.’

‘Shouldn’t it be repaired,’ I added, ‘if it’s done for?’

She replied: ‘It should, but it’s something we’ve no time for.’

12. Moon-Set (XXXII)

As on a lonely night

the moon descends,

over the silvery waters and fields,

where the breeze sighs,

and distant shadows make

a thousand vague aspects,

and deceptive objects,

among the tranquil waves,

the branches, hedges, hills, and villages:

and, lost at the sky’s end,

behind Alps or Apennines, or

in endless Tyrrhenian deeps,

sets, and dims the world,

so that shadows scatter, and a single

gloom darkens valley and mountain,

so night remains alone,

and the carter on the road salutes,

with mournful song, the last gleam

of vanishing light that led him on:

so youth melts away,

and leaves

our mortal state. The shadows

and the forms of delighted

illusion flee: and all the distant

hopes our mortal nature

trusts in, grow less.

Life remains, dark,

abandoned. The uncertain traveller

strains his eyes, blindly, in vain,

to find some goal or reason in the long

road ahead: and sees

how human habitation becomes

truly foreign to him, and he to it.

Our wretched life

would have seemed

too happy and joyful, up there, if youth,

whose every good brings a thousand ills,

had been allowed to last a lifetime.

The law that sentences

all creatures to death, would be too mild,

if half of life

had not first been made

harsher than the vilest death.

The eternals made a worthy discovery

of immortal intellect: old age,

worst of all evils, where desire

clings, but hope is quenched,

the founts of pleasure run dry, pain

often grows, and good will not return.

You, hills and shores,

the glory in the west, that silvered

the veil of night, has died,

yet you will not

be widowed long: from the east

you’ll see the sky

whiten anew, and dawn will rise:

then the sun will quickly follow

and, shine out

with powerful flames,

flooding you, and the eternal realms,

with torrents of light.

But mortal life, will not brighten

with new light, or new dawn,

once lovely youth is gone.

It will be lonely to the end: the gods

have set no limit to the gloom

that darkens old age, except the tomb.

13. Wild Broom (XXXIV)

(or The Flower of the Desert)