Sonnets of the Wingless Hours By Eugene Lee-Hamilton |
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ON THE FLY-LEAF OF LEOPARDI'S POEMS. |
 | Sonnets of the Wingless Hours |  |
112
ON THE FLY-LEAF OF LEOPARDI'S POEMS.
There was a hunch back in a slavish day,
Crushed out of shape by Heaven's iron weight,
Who made the old Italic string vibrate
In Freedom's harp, on which few dared to play;
Crushed out of shape by Heaven's iron weight,
Who made the old Italic string vibrate
In Freedom's harp, on which few dared to play;
A Titan's soul in Æsop's cripple clay;
A dwarf Prometheus, blasted by Jove's hate,
Who scorned the God that held him locked in fate,
And called the world the mud in which he lay.
A dwarf Prometheus, blasted by Jove's hate,
Who scorned the God that held him locked in fate,
And called the world the mud in which he lay.
And mud it is; but mud which can be tilled
To grow the wheat, the olive, and the grape,
And fill more garners than men's hands can build.
To grow the wheat, the olive, and the grape,
And fill more garners than men's hands can build.
And those bare tracts, whence all would fain escape,
Conceal, perchance, some buried urn all filled
With golden Darics stamped with a winged shape.
Conceal, perchance, some buried urn all filled
With golden Darics stamped with a winged shape.
| Sonnets of the Wingless Hours | |