Page:Carducci - Poems of Italy.djvu/30



I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song Would put the centuries into little verse; And palpitating to each thought, my heart Follows the stanza's upward-quivering flight. But with the years, my verse will dull and fade; Thou, Adige, the eternal poet art, Who still—when of these hills the turret crown Is shattered into fragments, and the snake Sits hissing in the sunlight where now stands The great basilica, St. Zeno's fane— Still in the desert solitudes wilt voice The sleepless tedium of the infinite. 24