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(From Paradise, Canto XV) Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
FLORENCE, within the ancient boundary | |
| From which she taketh still her tierce and nones, | |
| Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste. | |
| No golden chain she had, nor coronal, | |
| Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle | 5 |
| That caught the eye more than the person did. | |
| Not yet the daughter at her birth struck fear | |
| Into the father, for the time and dower | |
| Did not o’errun this side or that the measure. | |
| No houses had she void of families, | 10 |
| Not yet had thither come Sardanapalus | |
| To show what in a chamber can be done; | |
| Not yet surpassed had Montemalo been | |
| By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed | |
| Shall in its downfall be as in its rise. | 15 |
| Bellincion Berti saw I go begirt | |
| With leather and with bone, and from the mirror | |
| His dame depart without a painted face; | |
| And him of Nerli saw, and him of Vecchio, | |
| Contented with their simple suits of buff, | 20 |
| And with the spindle and the flax their dames. | |
| O fortunate women! and each one was certain | |
| Of her own burial-place, and none as yet | |
| For sake of France was in her bed deserted. | |
| One o’er the cradle kept her studious watch, | 25 |
| And in her lullaby the language used | |
| That first delights the fathers and the mothers; | |
| Another, drawing tresses from her distaff, | |
| Told o’er among her family the tales | |
| Of Trojans and of Fesole and Rome. | 30 |
| As great a marvel then would have been held | |
| A Lapo Salterello, a Cianghella, | |
| As Cincinnatus or Cornelia now. | |
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