November Poetry - part IV

Last year I posted a few November poems in order to keep a regular posting schedule while in the depths of ennui. This time around I've not sunken completely back into those depths, so this poem is one I would just like to share, namely one of Folgòre da San Gimignano's sonnets of the months.

Folgòre da San Gimignano (fl. 1309-1317) was born Giacomo da Michele but was given his nom de plume on account of his splendid way of life in his native San Gimignano, which is said to be reflected in his poems. He wrote on the pleasures of life, and the poem posted below is from his sonetti dei mesi, the sonnets of the months, which he, according to this website, was dedicated to a band of Siense nobles who took a rather hedonistic approach to life. The poem will be first given in the Italian, and below you will find a translation made by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Italian text is taken from wikisource, while Rossetti's translation comes from this website.

Scorpio, from MS. Harley 4940

Breviari d'amor, Matfres Eymengau de Beziers, French, 1st half of the 14th century

Courtesy of British Library

Novembre

E di novembre Petriuolo, il bagno,
con trenta muli carchi di moneta:
la ruga sia tutta coverta a seta;
coppe d’argento, bottacci di stagno:

e dar a tutt’ i stazzonier guadagno;
torchi doppier, che vegnan di Chiareta;
confetti con cedrata di Gaeta:
e béa ciascun e conforti ’l compagno.

E lo freddo sia grande e ’l fuoco spesso;
fagiani, starne, colombi mortiti,
lèvori, cavrioli rosto e lesso:

e sempre aver acconci gli appetiti;
la notte ’l vento e piover a ciel messo:
e siate ne le letta ben forniti.

A piazza in San Gimignano

Let baths and wine-butts be November's due,
With thirty mule-loads of broad gold-pieces;
And canopy with silk the streets that freeze;
And keep your drink-horns steadily in view.

Let every trader have his gain of you:
Clareta shall your lamps and torches send,—
Caëta, citron-candies without end;
And each shall drink, and help his neighbour to.

And let the cold be great, and the fire grand:
And still for fowls, and pastries sweetly wrought,
For hares and kids, for roast and boiled, be sure

You always have your appetites at hand;
And then let night howl and heaven fall, so nought
Be missed that makes a man's bed-furniture.

A Silent Wood - poem by Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddal, self-portrait
From wikimedia commons

Days are currently quite busy and I've little energy left for blogging, but in order to maintain a semblance of frequency, I'll put up more poetry now and then. Since I'm currently taking a course on medievalism in Victorian England, I found it fitting to present a poem by one of the key figures of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Elizabeth Siddal (1829-62), a woman of considerable and versatile talents. She has probably gained most fame as a model for some of the most iconic paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites, but she was also herself a painter - as witnessed above - and a poet. Below is one of her poems, A Silent Wood, dated with some uncertainty to 1855-57 by William Michael Rossetti. The text is taken from The Pre-Raphaelites From Rossetti to Ruskin, edited by Dinah Roe and issued in the Penguin Classics series in 2010.

A Silent Wood

O silent wood, I enter thee
With a heart so full of misery -
For all the voices from the trees
And the ferns that cling about my knees.

In thy darkest shadow let me sit
When the grey owls about thee flit:
There I will ask of thee a boon,
That I may not faint or die or swoon.

Gazing through the gloom like one
Whose life and hopes are also done,
Frozen like a thing of stone,
I sit in thy shadow - but not alone.

Can God bring back the day when we two stood
Beneath the clinging trees in that dark wood?

Beata Beatrix (1864-70), Dante Gabriel Rossetti

One of the most famous paintings to which Elizabeth Siddal sat model