SONNET from Fidentio

SONNET
from
Fidentio [1] 

Day engraved on whitest stone!
Fated for supremest joy;
Golden day, and prized more high
Than that which for my birth I own!
When my hopes were all o'erthrown,
When to my despairing eye
Gloomy death stood threatening nigh,
Thou to my relief hast flown:
Thou, sweet day for ever dear,
After absence, hath restored
My Camillus to my eyes,
Lo! for this, I grateful rear
To thee an altar, day adored!
And place my lyre a sacrifice.

Notes

[1] EDITOR'S NOTE: "Sonnet from Fidentio" does not appear in Psyche, with Other Poems or Mary (or Collected Poems and Journals) and is not dated in Verses. It presents a verse translation of "Sonetto XI" from Camillo Scrofa's I Cantici di Fidentio Glottogrysio Ludimagistro (1743): "O giorno col lapillo albo signando, / Giorno al mio gaudio et al mio ben fatale, / Aureo, felice, et più del mio natale / Da me perpetuamente celebrando; / Quando io credra migrar del secul, quando / Credea proximo aver l' ora letale, / Tu propitio da me scacci ogni male, / Et mi vai tutto dentro exhilarando: / Tu, santo dì, tu, luce amata et cara, / Dopo absentia si ria, pene si dure, / Rendi a questi occhi il suo Camillo adorno, / Drizzate tosto, Messer Blosio, un' ara, / Date mi plectro, portate igne et thure, / Ch'io vo' far sacrificio a si bel giorno." BACK