Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
- Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
- di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
- in sul mio primo giovenile errore
- quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono,
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- del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono
- fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
- ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
- spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.
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- Ma ben veggio or sì come al popol tutto
- favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
- di me medesmo meco mi vergogno;
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- et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
- e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
- che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.
- O ye who hear in these my scattered rhymes
- The sound of sighs that on my heart did prey,
- Drawn from the errors of those youthful times
- When I was other than I am to-day:
- Where’er ye be who love by proof have known,
- I sure shall pity find and pardon free
- For changing moods wherein I laugh or moan
- With empty hopes or vain despondency.
- Amid the multitude, I clearly see
- Of idle jest I long have been the theme,
- Until I blush at my simplicity,
- And all the fruit of love is bitter shame
- And vain repentance, till it clearly seems
- The things that charm the world are idle dreams.
Translation by William Dudley Foulke, 1915.
- You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
- of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
- in my first vagrant youthfulness,
- when I was partly other than I am,
-
- I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
- for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
- between vain hope and vain sadness,
- in those who understand love through its trials.
-
- Yet I see clearly now I have become
- an old tale amongst all these people, so that
- it often makes me ashamed of myself;
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- and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
- and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
- of how the world’s delight is a brief dream.
- --oOo-- -