Leopardi - Il Primo Amore, Part 4
For Kitty
Amarissima allor la ricordanza
Locommisi nel petto, e mi serrava
Ad ogni voce il core, a ogni sembianza.
E lunga doglia il sen mi ricercava,
Com’è quando a distesa Olimpo piove
Malinconicamente e i campi lava.
Ned io ti conoscea, garzon di nove
E nove Soli, in questo a pianger nato
Quando facevi, amor, le prime prove.
Quando in ispregio ogni piacer, né grato
M’era degli astri il riso, o dell’aurora
Queta il silenzio, o il verdeggiar del prato.
Anche di gloria amor taceami allora
Nel petto, cui scaldar tanto solea,
Che di beltade amor vi fea dimora.
Then the very bitter memory
settled in my breast, and locked my heart
against every other voice and face.
And long suffering entered in my breast,
as when Olympus rains down desolation
everywhere around and floods the fields.
Nor did I, a boy of eighteen, know you
when you made your first experiments,
Love, on him who was born to lament.
When I disdained all pleasures, and the stars’
smile was inimical, or the stillness
of the calm dawn, or the meadow’s greening.
Even the love of glory, which before
had moved me so, was silenced in my breast then,
for love had made it beauty’s dwelling place.
(translated by Jonathan Galassi, photograph by Edward Steichen)
