Poems of Giacomo Leopardi/Poem 33

THE SETTING OF THE MOON

As in the lonely night

O'er lakes and mountains bathed in silver light,

When zephyr gaily plays,

And visions meet our gaze,

Strange forms that weave a power

In the nocturnal hour,

By distant shadows wrought

O'er hill and dale and gently flowing streams:

The Moon descends unto the sky's last verge

Behind the ridge of Alp or Appenine,

Or in the Tyrrhene sea her rays doth merge;

And as she falls, no radiance more doth shine,

The shadows fade, and all

The world lies wrapped in one funereal pall;

Bereaved the night remains;

And singing in impassioned, mournful strains,

The wanderer salutes the last, faint ray

Of her who lit his way

With argent crescent in the spheres divine:

Even thus youth wanes and flies,

And every joyaunce dies,

And Hope expires, the reed whereon we leant

In happier days, ere every bliss was spent,

And ere our life obscure

And desolate became.

The weary wanderer gazes on the scene

Of sable hue that now doth intervene,

And vainly asketh why

So dire a path before him yet should lie;

And as unto his eye

The world appeareth changed,

He finds himself no more what he hath been,

But to the world and all its ways estranged.

Too happy and too gay

Our span of mortal life

Would seem unto the powers that rule above,

If youthfulness were to endure for aye,

Wherein a thousand sorrows yield one joy;

Too gentle the decree

Whence all that liveth doomed to death we see,

Unless a gift were made,

When men have finished half of their long way,

Then death itself with great terrors fraught;

The worst of ills and the extreme of woe,

Old age was found by an unswerving doom,

Wherein desire doth glow,

Hope wanes and pales and dwindles down to nought,

The fountains of delight are frozen and quelled,

The sorrows greater, and all bliss withheld.

Ye mountains and ye plains,

When fall the rays that in the West adorn

With silvery trace the sable veil of night,

Ye shall not be forlorn

For many hours: the Eastern skies ere long

Ye shall perceive aglow

With break of day and early rise of morn,

Whom following, the Sun his fires doth show,

And blazing all around

In full effulgence strong,

With seas of light invades

The space above and the terrestrial glades.

But life of man, when lovely youth is spent,

No other light hath found,

Nor to existence other dawn is lent:

'Tis lonely and bereaved even to its close:

And to the night that weighs on later years,

By the decree of doom,

As goal is given the silence of the tomb.