Funere mersit acerbo - Giosuè Carducci

O thou who on yon flowery hill art lying,
And by thy side our father too is sleeping,
Dost thou not hear, through the tall grasses sighing
Upon thy grave, a little voice of weeping?

It is my little one, who, trembling, crying.
Knocks at thy silent door, who here was keeping,
Thy memory green in that great name undying,
And who like thee has fled this life of weeping.

Ah no, for playing in a flowery place,
Smiled on by gracious visions fair and bright,
The Shadow wrapped him in his cold embrace.
And thrust him to thy shores of desolate night.
Oh, take him to thee, lest he turn his face,
Seeking his mother, and the sun's sweet light.

---

Giosuè Carducci (1835 - 1907) Italy
Translated by Lois Saunders
Source: Strangers and foreigners being translations from the French, Italian, German and Middle High German :done into English verse by Lois Saunders,  Elkin Mathews, 1912

• Note: in the second stanza the allusion to "that great name" is because the poet's father and son were both called Dante