L'infinito

Giacomo Leopardi(1798–1837)

Canti, 1819

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,e questa siepe, che da tanta partedell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.Ma, sedendo e mirando, interminatispazi di lá da quella, e sovrumanisilenzi, e profondissima quieteio nel pensier mi fingo; ove per pocoil cor non si spaura. E come il ventoodo stormir tra queste piante, io quelloinfinito silenzio a questa vocevo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,e le morte stagioni, e la presentee viva, e il suon di lei. Cosí tra questaimmensitá s’annega il pensier mio;e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.

From the Canti (written around 1819), via the Italian Wikisource transcription (Donati edition). That edition numbers every fifth line; it was omitted.

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.

About the poem

From a lonely hill, Leopardi looks at a hedge that shuts out much of the horizon. But precisely because he cannot see the end, he imagines «boundless spaces» beyond it, superhuman silences and a deepest quiet, until the heart is almost overcome with fear.

Then the wind stirs the branches, and the poet sets that sound against the infinite silence; eternity comes to him, the dead seasons and the living present. His thought founders in that immensity, and the poem closes on one of the most famous lines in the Italian language: «and to be shipwrecked is sweet to me in this sea».

The verse is kept in Italian. Translating it in passing would replace the work with a paraphrase of it.