Journal of Italian Translation

Joseph Tusiani/Ugo Foscolo
we mortals worship her, who welcomes most
the hymn that calls her Cytherea the Fair.
‘T was she, the holy Goddess, who, one day,
tenderly pitying our wrathful strife,
at last together with the Graces rose
out of the waters whereto she had plunged
to charge the flocks of Nereus with life.
Glad, the Ionian waves first welcomed them—
the waves that, friendly to the beauteous sand
as well as to its hospitable moss,
longingly come from Cythera each day
to my maternal hills where as a child
the deity of Venus I adored.
Hail, Zante: To the Antenorian shores,
last refuge of the household Gods of Troy
and of my ancestors, will I commend
my song and bones; to thee alone my thought,
for with the Graces no one can converse
who impiously forsakes his native land.
A holy town is Zante. Once her temples
and hillocks harbored the restoring shade
of woodlands sacred to Diana’s chorus
and festival, before God Neptune strengthened
with siege-resisting towers Ilium
for wicked-hearted King Laomedon.
Most beautiful is Zante. British ships
pour ample treasures on her; from the sky
the timeless sun sheds its most vital rays
on her alone while Jove grants lustrous clouds,
wonder of olive-groves, and boundless hills
teeming with vines: a rosy healthiness
is in the air, kept fragrant evermore
by ever-verdant cedars and wild blooms.
The whole sea shone the very day it held
the three fair Graces balanced on a shell
and sweetly fondled by the Goddess: there,
on every wave’s crest, just as many swarms
of restless bees onrush and, borne aloft
by the first fragile breath of Zephyrus,
others and others come in buzzing hives,
which, forming endless clusters in the air,
hover above the nectar of each bud
dreaming of future honey blissfully,
so many atop the wide, bright billows were
the loving lovely Nereids of the deep:
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