C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

To Leonora of Esté

By Torquato Tasso (1544–1595)

Al nobil colle, ove in antichi marmi

Translation of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen

[Written when the Princess was on a visit to her uncle, the Cardinal Ippolito II. d’Esté, at his villa at Tivoli, considered the most beautiful in Italy.]

TO the romantic hills, where free

To thine enchanted eyes,

Works of Greek taste in statuary

Of antique marble rise,

My thought, fair Leonora, roves,

And with it to their gloom of groves

Fast bears me as it flies;

For far from thee, in crowds unblest,

My fluttering heart but ill can rest.

There to the rock, cascade, and grove,

On mosses dropt with dew,

Like one who thinks and sighs of love

The livelong summer through,

Oft would I dictate glorious things,

Of heroes, to the Tuscan strings

Of my sweet lyre anew;

And to the brooks and trees around,

Ippolito’s high name resound.

But now what longer keeps me here?

And who, dear lady, say,

O’er Alpine rocks and marshes drear,

A weary length of way,

Guide me to thee? so that, enwreathed

With leaves by Poesy bequeathed

From Daphne’s hallowed bay,

I trifle thus in song?—Adieu!

Let the soft zephyr whisper who.

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