Social Commentaries

Sonnet: To a newly enriched Man; reminding him of the Wants of the Poor

by Guido Cavalcanti c. 1255–1300

Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1861) · From The Early Italian Poets (1861)

Social Commentaries

As thou wert loth to see, before thy feet,
The dear broad coin roll all thy hill-slope down,
Till, 'twixt the cracks of the hard glebe, some clown
Should find, rub oft, and scarcely render it;—
Tell me, I charge thee, if by generous heat
Or clutching frost the fruits of earth be grown,
And by what wind the blight is o'er them strown,
And with what gloom the tempest is replete.
Moreover (an' it please thee,) when at morn
Thou hear'st the voice of the poor husbandman,
And those loud herds, his other family,—
I feel quite sure that if Bettina's born
With a kind heart, she does the best she can
To wheedle some of thy new wealth from thee.

MLA

Cavalcanti, Guido. “Sonnet: To a newly enriched Man; reminding him of the Wants of the Poor.” Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/cavalcanti/22/.

Chicago

Cavalcanti, Guido. “Sonnet: To a newly enriched Man; reminding him of the Wants of the Poor.” Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/cavalcanti/22/.

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