Dear Pepoli, how do you endure
this wearisome and troubling sleep
that we call life? By what hopes
is your heart sustained? In what thoughts,
in what happy or irksome works do you employ
that leisure your distant ancestors bequeathed you
this heavy and exhausting gift? All life
is idle, in every human condition,
if all the effort, that is aimed
at nothing worthy, and has no power
to realise its intent, is rightly named
idleness. And if I should call the labouring
crowd, seen at tranquil dawn and evening,
breaking the soil, or tending crops and herds,
idle, I would be right, since their life
is to sustain life, and life has no value
to the human race of itself alone.
The experienced sailor spends days
and nights in idleness: the endless sweat
of the workshops is idle: the soldier
on watch is idle, and in the danger of war:
and the miserly merchant lives in idleness:
whatever the care, the sweat, the watches,
the dangers, no one gains lovely happiness
for himself or others, though it’s all
mortal nature desires and searches for.
Yet for all the desire that has lead mortals
to be blessed with useless sighing
since the day when the world was born
nature has made a sort of medicine,
amongst life’s unhappiness, the various
necessities, that have to be provided
by thought and effort, and the day is
full, even if it may not be joyful,
for the human family: so that desire
is troubled and confused, and has less scope
to disturb the heart. So the creatures,
in whose hearts the desire to be happy
lives, no less vainly than it does in ours,
intent on what is needed for their lives,
spend their time less sadly, and less burdened,
than us, not condemning the slow hours.
But we, who trust to others’ hands
to provide our living, are left with
a greater necessity that none
but ourselves can supply, and that
with pain and tedium: I mean the necessity
of getting through our lives: cruel, unconquerable
necessity, that no accumulated wealth,
no rich flocks, or fertile fields,
no great halls, or purple robes can free
the human race from. When one of us,
scornful of the empty years, and hating
the light above, and inclined
to anticipate slow fate, fails to turn
a suicidal hand against himself,
the harsh sting of insatiable desire
that longs uselessly for happiness
makes him search all Italy
for a thousand ineffectual cures
that cannot compensate for the one
that Nature intends for us.

      One man is occupied night and day
cultivating his clothes and hairstyle,
his gestures and bearing, the vanity
of coaches and horses, crowded salons,
echoing squares and public gardens,
gambling, dining and envied dancing:
a smile never far from his lips: ah, but
deep in his heart, heavy, fixed, immovable,
like a column of steel, eternal tedium sits,
against which youth’s vigour
is powerless, unshaken by
sweet words from rosebud lips,
or a tender glance, trembling
from two dark eyes, the dear glance,
the mortal thing most worthy of heaven.

      Some other, turning to flee our sad
human fate, crosses the globe, spending
his time changing countries and climes,
wandering seas and hills: and all
the confines of space, that the infinite fields
of nature entire open to men, he adds
to his wandering. Ah, black care
sits high on his prow, and in every clime,
under every sky, happiness is called to
in vain: sadness lives and rules.

      There are those who choose to pass their time
in the cruel work of war, and idly stain
their hands with their brothers’ blood:
and those comforted by others’ pain,
thinking to make themselves less sad
by making others wretched, and using up
the time by doing harm. And those who
oppress virtue, wisdom and the arts:
and those who trample on their own
and other races, troubling the ancient peace
of foreign shores, with war, trade, fraud,
consuming the life their fate has granted.

      A gentler desire, a sweeter concern
rules you in the flower of youth, the lovely
April of your years, to some the happiest
and best gift of heaven, but heavy, bitter,
hostile to one without a country. You are
moved and roused to study verse,
and rehearse the beauty that appears rare,
slight, fugitive in this world, in speech,
with what vague imagination and our
own true error, more benign than nature
or the gods, produce so richly for us.
That man is a thousand times fortunate
who does not lose the fallen power
of dear imaginings through the years:
whom fate allows to keep his youthful
heart forever: who in his vigour
and in his failing years, beautifies
nature with his thoughts,
as he once did in his green age,
making dead things and the desert bloom.
May heaven grant you such: may the flame
that warms your heart today keep you
a lover of poetry in old age. I already feel
the sweet deceptions of my early years
failing me, and their delightful images
fade from my eyes, those I so loved,
that recalling them, always, to my final hour,
will make me desire them, and weep.
When my heart is wholly frozen,
chilled, and the calm and solitary smile
of open fields, the dawn song of the birds,
in spring, and the silent moon over the hills
and ridges in a clear sky, cannot move
my soul: when every beauty
of art or nature seems lifeless
and still to me: when every noble feeling
every tender affection is alien, strange:
then stripped of my only solace
I will choose other studies, less sweet,
on which the thankless residue of a life
of iron can be based. I will search for
the bitter truths, the hidden destiny
of mortal, and eternal things: why
the human race was born, and burdened
with pain and misery: to what final goal
fate and nature drive us: who delights in
or benefits from our sorrows:
by what rules or laws this mysterious
universe moves: on which the wise
heap praise, and to which I pay homage.

      I’ll spend my idle days in these
speculations: since truth, once known,
has its sad delights. And if in reasoning
on truth this way, my words prove
unpleasant to others, or misunderstood,
I’ll not grieve, since all my old desire
for glory will be quenched: no longer
that goddess vain, but blinder still
than chance, or fate, or love.