C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
To the Princesses of Ferrara
By Torquato Tasso (15441595)
O figlie di Renanta
Translation of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen
D
I talk, in whom birth, beauty, sense refined,
Virtue, gentility, and glory true
Are in such perfect harmony combined;
To you my sorrows I unfold,—a scroll
Of bitterness,—my wrongs, my griefs, my fears,
Part of my tale;—I cannot tell the whole,
But by rebellious tears!
I will recall you to yourselves, renew
Memory of me, your courtesies, your smile
Of gracious kindness, and (vowed all to you)
My past delightful years:
What then I was, what am: what, woe the while!
I am reduced to beg; from whence; what star
Guided me hither; who with bolt and bar
Confines; and who, when I for freedom grieved,
Promised me hope, yet still that hope deceived!
Of glorious demigods and kings! and if
My words are weak and few, the tears which grief
Wrings out are eloquent enough: I pine
For my loved lutes, lyres, laurels; for the shine
Of suns; for my dear studies, sports, my late
So elegant delights,—mirth, music, wine;
Piazzas, palaces, where late I sate,
Now the loved servant, now the social friend,—
For health destroyed, for freedom at an end,
The gloom—the solitude—th’ eternal grate—
And for the laws the Charities provide,
Oh, agony! to me denied! denied!
Who shuts me out!