Venice masks

Thursday 19 February 2015

Italia, Italia! O tu cui die la sorte - Vincenzo da Filicaja

Italia! thou, by lavish Nature graced
With ill-starr’d beauty, which to thee hath been
A fatal dowry, whose effects are traced
In the deep sorrows graven on thy mien;

Oh! that more strength, or fewer charms were thine,
That those might fear thee more, or love thee less,
Who seem to worship at thy beauty’s shrine,
Then leave thee to the death-pang’s bitterness!

Not then the herds of Gaul would drain the tide
Of that Eridanus thy blood hath dyed;
Nor from the Alps would legions, still renew’d,
Pour down; nor wouldst thou wield a foreign brand,
Nor fight thy battles with the stranger’s hand,
Still doomed to serve, subduing or subdued!

Vincenzo da Filicaja (1642 - 1707) Italy
Translated by Felicia Dorothea Browne Hemans
Source: Poems by Mrs Felicia Hemans, a new collection, Vol I, Hilliard, Little Gray & Wilkins, 1828

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