To Silvia
Giacomo Leopardi
Silvia, do you remember
the moments, in your mortal life,
when beauty still shone
in your sidelong, laughing eyes,
and you, light and thoughtful,
went
beyond girlhood’s limits?
The quiet rooms and the streets
around you, sounded
to your endless singing,
when you sat, happily content,
intent, on that woman’s work,
the vague future, arriving alive in your mind.
It was the scented May, and that’s how
you spent your day.
I would leave my intoxicating studies,
and the turned-down pages,
where my young life,
the best of me, was left,
and from the balcony of my father’s house
strain to catch the sound of your voice,
and your hand, quick,
running over the loom.
I would look at the serene sky,
the gold lit gardens and paths,
that side the mountains, this side the far-off sea.
And human tongue cannot say
what I felt then.
What sweet thoughts,
what hopes, what hearts, O Silvia mia!
How it appeared to us then,
all human life and fate!
When I recall that hope
such feelings pain me,
harsh, disconsolate,
I brood on my own destiny.
Oh Nature, Nature
why do you not give now
what you promised then? Why
do you so deceive your children?
Attacked, and conquered, by secret disease,
you died, my tenderest one, and did not see
your years flower, or feel your heart moved,
by sweet praise of your black hair
your shy, loving looks.
No friends talked with you,
on holidays, about love.
My sweet hopes died also
little by little: to me too
Fate has denied those years. Oh,
how you have passed me by,
dear friend of my new life,
my saddened hope!
Is this the world, the dreams,
the loves, events, delights,
we spoke about so much together?
Is this our human life?
At the advance of Truth
you fell, unhappy one,
and from the distance,
with your hand, you pointed
towards death’s coldness and the silent grave.
LOVE POEMS WANTED
:
Click here
if you would like to submit your
love poems
for possible inclusion on this site. We update our web site once per month. We will not post poems that are sexuallyexplicit.
Here Are Our Top Love Poems...
Love Poems 1
I Would Live in Your Love
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
Love Poems 2
Sonnet From the Portuguese V
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
Love Poems 3
The Bungler
by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Love Poems 4
Blue and White
by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)
Love Poems 5
Desideria
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Love Poems 6
The Taxi
by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Love Poems 7
Daffodils
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Love Poems 8
Song
by Sir William Watson (1858-1935)
Love Poems 9
To a Butterfly
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Love Poems 10
Sonnet From the Portuguese V
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
Love Poems 11
She Tells Her Love by Robert Ranke Graves
Love Poems 12
It's all I have to bring to-day by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 13
I Never Lost As Much by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 14
Heart, We Will Forget Him by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 15
O Mistress Mine by William Shakespeare
Love Poems 16
The Rose in the Deeps of his Heart by William Butler Yeats
Love Poems 17
Love by Robert Browning
Love Poems 18
My Pretty Rose Tree by William Blake
Love Poems 19
I Should Not Dare by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 20
One Day I Wrote Her Name by Edmund Spenser
Love Poems 21
Tell me not, Sweet, by Richard Lovelace
Love Poems 22
The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love Poems 23
The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love Poems 24
Hope is a Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 25
We Are Seven by William Wordsworth
Love Poems 26
Mag by Carl Sandburg
Love Poems 27
Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love Poems 28
I Sing by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 29
For Each Ecstatic Instant by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 30
Love Not Me by John Wilbye
Love Poems 31
Mild Is The Parting Year by Walter Savage Landor