Pastorini

Translated by Leigh Hunt

PROUD city, that by the Ligurian sea

Sittest as at a mirror, lofty and fair;

And towering from thy curving banks in air,

Scornest the mountains that attend on thee;

Why, with such structures, to which Italy

Has nothing else, though glorious, to compare,

Hast thou not souls, with something like a share

Of look, heart, spirit, and ingenuity?

Better to bury at once (’twould cost thee less)

Thy golden-sweating heaps, where cramp’d from light,

They and their pinch’d fasts ply their old distress.

Thy rotting wealth, unspent, like a thick blight,

Clouds the close eyes of these;—dark hands oppress

With superstition those;—and all is night.