Samuel Waddington, comp. The Sonnets of Europe. 1888.
“Ah, pilgrims! ye that, haply musing, go”Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
Translated by Henry Francis Cary
From the “Vita Nuova”
From the “Vita Nuova”
A
On aught save that which on your road ye meet,
From land so distant, tell me, I intreat,
Come ye, as by your mien and looks ye show?
Why mourn ye not, as through these gates of woe
Ye wend along our city’s midmost street,
Even like those who nothing seem to weet
What chance hath fall’n, why she is grieving so?
If ye to listen but a while would stay,
Well knows this heart, which inly sigheth sore,
That ye would then pass weeping on your way.
Oh, hear: her Beatrice is no more;
And words there are a man of her might say,
Would make a stranger’s eye that loss deplore.