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

To the Princesses of Ferrara

For their Intercession with the Duke

O figlie di Renanta

Translation of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen

DAUGHTERS of lorn Renée, give ear! to you

I talk, in whom birth, beauty, sense refined,

Virtue, gentility, and glory true

Are in such perfect harmony combined;

To you my sorrows I unfold,—a scroll

Of bitterness,—my wrongs, my griefs, my fears,

Part of my tale;—I cannot tell the whole,

But by rebellious tears!

I will recall you to yourselves, renew

Memory of me, your courtesies, your smile

Of gracious kindness, and (vowed all to you)

My past delightful years:

What then I was, what am: what, woe the while!

I am reduced to beg; from whence; what star

Guided me hither; who with bolt and bar

Confines; and who, when I for freedom grieved,

Promised me hope, yet still that hope deceived!

These I call back to you, O slips divine

Of glorious demigods and kings! and if

My words are weak and few, the tears which grief

Wrings out are eloquent enough: I pine

For my loved lutes, lyres, laurels; for the shine

Of suns; for my dear studies, sports, my late

So elegant delights,—mirth, music, wine;

Piazzas, palaces, where late I sate,

Now the loved servant, now the social friend,—

For health destroyed, for freedom at an end,

The gloom—the solitude—th’ eternal grate—

And for the laws the Charities provide,

Oh, agony! to me denied! denied!

From my sweet brotherhood of men, alas,

Who shuts me out!