Giacomo Leopardi was an Italian poet who was born on a day like today in Recanati, in 1798. He was also an essayist and in his work in general he has the tone romantic and melancholic of the time he lived. From a noble family, he was raised very rigidly, but his father's large library allowed him to acquire much knowledge and culture. His titles include At the foot of Dante's monument or Songs. Esta es una selection from them.
Giacomo Leopardi - Songs
Canto XII
I always loved this hill
and the fence that prevents me from seeing
beyond the horizon.
Looking in the distance at the limitless spaces,
the superhuman silences and their deep stillness,
I find my thoughts
and my heart is not scared.
I hear the whistling of the wind over the fields,
and in the midst of the infinite silence I grope my voice:
The eternal subjugates me, the dead seasons,
the present reality and all its sounds.
Thus, through this immensity my thought drowns:
and I am gently shipwrecked in this sea.
Canto fourteen
Oh you, funny moon, I well remember
that on this hill, now a year ago,
I came to contemplate you in anguish:
and you rose above that grove
like now, that you illuminate everything.
More tremulous and clouded by crying
that peeked out of my eyelids, your face
he offered himself to my eyes, because suffering
it was my life: and it still is, it doesn't change,
oh my dear moon. And I'm still glad
remembering and renewing time
of my pain. Oh how blissful it is
in the youthful age, when still so long
hope is and memory is brief,
remembering things already past,
even sad, and even if the fatigue lasts!
Canto XXVIII
You will rest forever
tired heart! Deceit died
that eternal I imagined. He died. And I warn
that in me, of flattering illusions
With the hope, even the longing has died.
Forever rest;
enough to beat. There is no thing
worthy of your heartbeat; nor the earth
deserves a sigh: eagerness and boredom
It is life, no more, and I mud the world.
Calm down, and despair
the last time: to our race the Fate
he only granted dying. Therefore, haughty,
disdain your existence and nature
and the power lasts
that with hidden mode
over universal ruin reigns,
and the infinite vanity of the whole.
Canto XXXV
Far from one's own branch,
poor delicate box,
where are you going? From the beech
where I was born, the wind tore me away.
He, returning, to the flight
from the forest to the countryside,
from the valley to the mountain he leads me.
With him, perpetually,
I go on pilgrimage, and the rest I do not know.
I go where everything goes
where naturally
the rose leaf goes
and the bay leaf.
Canto XXXVI
When i came boy
to enter into discipline with the Muses.
One of them took my hand
and during that day
around led me
to see your office.
Showed me one by one
art supplies,
and the different service
that each of them
is used at work
of prose and verse.
I looked at him, and said:
"Musa, and the lime?" And the goddess answered:
«The lime is spent; we no longer use it.
And I: «But redo it
it is precise, since it is so necessary ».
And he replied: "That's right, but time is lacking."
Canto XXXVIII
Here, wandering around the threshold,
the rain and the storm I invoke in vain,
so that I may keep it in my abode.
The hurricane raged in the forest
and thunder rumbled through the clouds,
Before dawn lit up the sky
Oh beloved clouds, sky, earth, plants!
part my love: mercy, yes in this world
pity exists for a sad lover.
Wake up, whirlwind, and try now
to wrap me, oh turmoil, so far
May the sun renew the day in another land!
The sky clears, the wind ceases, they sleep
the leaves and the grass, and, dazzled,
the raw sun fills my eyes with tears.