Her Monument, The Image Cut Thereon

From The Italian Of Leopardi

Such wast thou, Who art now But buried dust and rusted skeleton. Above the bones and mire, Motionless, placed in vain, Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years, Sole guard of grief Sole guard of memory Standeth this image of the beauty sped. O glance, when thou wast still as thou art now, How hast thou set the fire A-tremble in men's veins; lip curved high To mind me of some urn of full delight, O throat girt round of old with swift desire, O palms of Love, that in your wonted ways Not once but many a day Felt hands turn ice a-sudden, touching ye, That ye were once! of all the grace ye had That which remaineth now Shameful, most sad Finds 'neath this rock fit mould, fit resting place! And still when fate recalleth, Even that semblance that appears amongst us Is like to heaven's most 'live imagining. All, all our life's eternal mystery! To-day, on high Mounts, from our mighty thoughts and from the fount Of sense untellable, Beauty That seems to be some quivering splendour cast By the immortal nature on this quicksand, And by surhuman fates Given to mortal state To be a sign and an hope made secure Of blissful kingdoms and the aureate spheres; And on the morrow, by some lightsome twist, Shameful in sight, abject, abominable All this angelic aspect can return And be but what it was With all the admirable concepts that moved from it Swept from the mind with it in its departure. Infinite things desired, lofty visions 'Got on desirous thoughts by natural virtue, And the wise concord, whence through delicious seas The arcane spirit of the whole Mankind Turns hardy pilot . . . and if one wrong note Strike the tympanum, Instantly That paradise is hurled to nothingness. O mortal nature, If thou art Frail and so vile in all, How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense; Yet if thou art Noble in any part How is the noblest of thy speech and thought So lightly wrought Or to such base occasion lit and quenched?