Journal of Italian Translation

Joseph Tusiani/Ugo Foscolo
a rhyme as pleasant as the song itself.
Those wingèd, winsome bees descended first
right where the mighty Eridanus brings
its largest prey of torrents to the sea.
There fate-presaging sorceress Alcina
had copiously strewn wild amaranths,
and there, along the very stream, a thick
forest of laurels veiled much of the sky
with its black shadow: on their trunks Atlante
would carve Ruggiero’s ancestors and deeds;
and there a silent throng of phantom knights
and loving ladies with a sorcerer
awaited still their singer: there he saw
the honeycombs at his disposal placed,
and made a harvest of all laurel trees.
But the best honey from Alcina’s wreaths
was left for but one poet yet to taste –
the witty bard that also sang with it
lovelorn Angelica’s unhappy woes.
Yet no less dear is to the bees the shade
of the tall cypress where Torquato hung
his harp when, madly burning, through the woods
he wandered “moving shepherds and sweet nymphs
to pity and to laughter at one time;
no longer did he write what made man laugh—
he only did what made man only laugh.”
Ah, why did he
meander, O sweet bees, away from you,
who liked to hear him sing Erminia’s flight
and pious arms and holy sepulcher?
No hate of you—a fatal Power brought him
back to a princely court and to new tears.
Such was the venture
of all those ever-gentle, pinioned bees
destined to halt their flight upon the Po.
While from the Lilybaean Sea the Fairy
with many soon-kept promises allured
every Phoebean creature come to rest
finally on the Adriatic shores,
the other swarm that, borne by Flora’s love,
had only aimed at the Tyrrhenian sky,
right on the Arno’s estuary found
a lady that had long been waiting there:
Ceres-resembling, in her hands she held
vermilion lilies and fresh olive sprouts.
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