XXXII.
FROM PETRARCA.
“Solo e pensoso i piu deserti campi.”
In this and other translations from the Italian, I have not
succeeded in preserving the simple purity of the original diction so
completely as I could have wished. Italian words are so beautiful,
that they are when “unadorned, adorned the most.” English,
with all its excellencies, is so deficient in euphony, and so large a
part of its vocabulary is debased by association, that it always
requires strong or deep pathos, beautiful images, profound thought,
rapid and striking interest, or much artifice in composition; something,
in short, to withdraw the attention from the coarseness of
the vehicle. We cannot emulate the simplicity of the Greeks or the
Italians. The poet, indeed, who can and dare, may be austere;
but austerity and simplicity are different things. Simplicity is
never, austerity is always, conscious of itself. The Sunday habit
of a modest country girl is simple—the regulation dress of a
nunnery is meant to be austere. Simplicity does not seek what it
feels no need of—Austerity rejects what it judges unfit.
But neither simplicity nor austerity are necessarily poetical. The
simple must be beautiful, the austere must be great, or they have
no place in genuine poetry. A daisy is simple, a turnip still
simpler, yet the former belongs to the poetry of Nature, the latter
to her most utilitarian prose.
Lonely and pensive o'er the lonely strand,
“With wandering steps and slow,” I loiter on,
My eyes at watch, to warn me to be gone
If mark of human foot impress the sand;
Else would my piteous plight be rudely scann'd,
And curious folk would stare to see the wan
And deathlike images of joy foregone,
And how I inly waste like smouldering brand.
Or I would fain believe the tangled wood
Which girds the small field on the mountain side
The one sole witness to my crazy mood;
But ah! what sandy waste, or forest dim,
My haunt obscure from Love can ever hide?
Where'er I think, I converse hold with him.
