The Infinite 1-20-23

Here is a very old poem.

The Infinite

This lonely hill to me was ever dear,

This hedge, which shuts from view so large a part

Of the remote horizon. As I sit

And gaze, absorbed, I in my thought conceive

The boundless spaces that beyond it range,

The silence supernatural, and rest

Profound; and for a moment I am calm.

And as I listen to the wind, that through

These trees is murmuring, its plaintive voice

I with that infinite compare;

And things eternal I recall, and all

The seasons dead, and this, that round me lives,

And utters its complaint. Thus wandering

My thought in this immensity is drowned;

And sweet to me is shipwreck on this sea.

  

Giacomo Leopardi (1819)

A new teacher sent me this poem and information.

Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837), the greatest Italian Romantic poet, spent most of his youth as a recluse in his home in the small provincial town of Recanati, Italy, where nothing of notice ever happened. Being an invalid, he rarely ventured beyond the walls of his garden. Albeit a virtual prisoner, and probably because of it, he let his imagination space far and wide… What lies beyond that hedge? The Infinite. The triumph of imagination and mind over matter and our physical limitations. Dare to go, you youth, where person has gone before… 

This is a poem all Italian students had to memorize in high school. Not sure they still do now, but they certainly should.  It is one of the first Italian poems in free verse, so it was indeed a very daring composition in 1819.