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I, too, fair river, sing, and this my song
Would put the centuries into little verse;
And palpitating to each thought, my heart
Follows the stanza's upward-quivering flight.
But with the years, my verse will dull and fade;
Thou, Adige, the eternal poet art,
Who still—when of these hills the turret crown
Is shattered into fragments, and the snake
Sits hissing in the sunlight where now stands
The great basilica, St. Zeno's fane—
Still in the desert solitudes wilt voice
The sleepless tedium of the infinite.
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