#versigiusti 2 (part 2 of 4) (Giuseppe Giusti. Published and unpublished verses. Florence, Felice Le Monnier, 1852.)… (The Sunday of the Dead would be obvious and I am "strange")
Giuseppe Verdi - I Lombardi alla prima Crociata I held back; for having rained in the midst
Of that throng, I do not deny
Having felt a sense of revulsion
That she does not feel thanks to her office.
I felt a sultriness, a breath of stench;
Excuse me, Your Excellency, it felt like sawdust,
In that beautiful house of the Lord,
Even the candles of the high altar.
But in that moment when the Priest
Prepares to consecrate the mystical offering,
A sudden sweetness strikes me
From towards the altar, a sound of a band.
From the trumpets of war the notes flew out
Like a voice that implores,
Of a people that groans in harsh suffering
remembers the lost goods.
It was a chorus by Verdi; the chorus to God
Of the wretched thirsty Lombards;
That: O Lord, from the native roof,
That has shaken and intoxicated so many hearts.
Here I began to no longer be myself;
And as if those beings had become
People from our own kind,
I involuntarily entered the crowd.
