Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79. | | | | Introductory | | To Italy | | Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) |
| | Anonymous translation
FAIR land, once loved of Heaven o’er all beside, | |
| Which blue waves gird and lofty mountains screen! | |
| Thou clime of fertile fields and sky serene, | |
| Whose gay expanse the Apennines divide! | |
| What boots it now, that Rome’s old warlike pride | 5 |
| Left thee of humbled earth and sea the queen? | |
| Nations, that served thee then, now fierce convene | |
| To tear thy locks and strew them o’er the tide. | |
| And lives there son of thine so base at core, | |
| Who, luring foreign friends to thine embrace, | 10 |
| Stabs to the heart thy beauteous, bleeding frame? | |
| Are these the noble deeds of ancient fame? | |
| Thus do ye God’s almighty name adore? | |
| O hardened age! O false and recreant race! | | | | |
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