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(From Inferno, Canto XX) Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
ABOVE in beauteous Italy lies a lake | |
| At the Alp’s foot that shuts in Germany | |
| Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco. | |
| By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed, | |
| ’Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino, | 5 |
| With water that grows stagnant in that lake. | |
| Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor, | |
| And he of Brescia, and the Veronese | |
| Might give his blessing, if he passed that way. | |
| Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong, | 10 |
| To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, | |
| Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. | |
| There of necessity must fall whatever | |
| In bosom of Benaco cannot stay, | |
| And grows a river down through verdant pastures. | 15 |
| Soon as the water doth begin to run, | |
| No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio, | |
| Far as Governo, where it falls in Po. | |
| Not far it runs before it finds a plain | |
| In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, | 20 |
| And oft ’t is wont in summer to be sickly. | |
| Passing that way the virgin pitiless | |
| Land in the middle of the fen descried, | |
| Untilled and naked of inhabitants; | |
| There to escape all human intercourse | 25 |
| She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise | |
| And lived, and left her empty body there. | |
| The men, thereafter, who were scattered round, | |
| Collected in that place, which was made strong | |
| By the lagoon it had on every side; | 30 |
| They built their city over those dead bones, | |
| And, after her who first the place selected, | |
| Mantua named it, without other omen. | |
| Its people once within more crowded were, | |
| Ere the stupidity of Casalodi | 35 |
| From Pinamonte had received deceit. | |
| Therefore I caution thee, if e’er thou hearest | |
| Originate my city otherwise, | |
| No falsehood may the verity defraud. | |
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