Journal of Italian Translation

Joseph Tusiani/Ugo Foscolo
sorry not yet to die upon the breast
of Pratolino’s ever–running nymph
or shunned by lonely breezes of the night.
Give the wild lily that, although it shows
its kindred forms less high, can dazzle still
in the pure mantle of the amaranth;
mix all sky-blue and golden hyacinths
with Bellosguardo’s jonquils that Pomona
still for her lover picks, with all the proud
carnations ever new in shades and shapes,
and with the blooms that on victorious wings
the Zephyrs from Dawn’s garden snatched and rought –
a recent trophy—to our very shores,
and now this gentle priestess gently grows
with artful heat and hospitable love
among the cedars hanging o’er her home.
Harmonious and soft both to the sight
and to the soul the very sound exhales;
bright shine the wreaths that of so many hues
as well as many fragrances are wrought;
and yet the flower that twelve Gods have made
proud of their names can sever all of them
and place them on the altar with a smile,
praying that, out of all the blooms she grows
and decks her harp with just to honor you,
one you may pick, fair Goddesses, to blend
into the garland that on April sixth,
O lovely Deities, in Sorga’s vale
out of all roses wet with tears you weave
for Venus, your own mother.
II
Let now Polymnia, the wingèd Goddess
that plucks many a lyre at one time
and, more than any other Muse, in heaven
owns flower gardens, understand the praises
of all her wreaths now that the lovely lady,
the second priestess of the Goddesses,
comes to the altar with a honeycomb.
Our own, not other nations’, is the rite
that celebrates the honeycomb’s old lore,
wherefore in Italy heavenly bees
with endless murmur to the Graces yield
abundant honey: he who tastes of it
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