Tales of a Wayside Inn

One summer morning, when the sun was hot, / Weary with labor in his garden-plot, / On a rude bench beneath his cottage eaves, / Ser Federigo sat among the leaves / Of a huge vine, that, with its arms outspread, / Hung its delicious clusters overhead. / Below him, through the lovely valley flowed / The river Arno, like a winding road, / And from its banks were lifted high in air / The spires and roofs of Florence called the Fair; / To him a marble tomb, that rose above / His wasted fortunes and his buried love. / For there, in banquet and in tournament, / His wealth had lavished been, his substance spent, / To woo and lose, since ill his wooing sped, / Monna Giovanna, who his rival wed, / Yet ever in his fancy reigned supreme, / The ideal woman of a young man's dream.

Then he withdrew, in poverty and pain, / To this small farm, the last of his domain, / His only comfort and his only care / To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear; / His only forester and only guest / His falcon, faithful to him, when the rest, / Whose willing hands had found so light of yore / The brazen knocker of his palace door, / Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch, / That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch. / Companion of his solitary ways, / Purveyor of his feasts on holidays, / On him this melancholy man bestowed / The love with which his nature overflowed.