What festival is ancient Rome preparing?
 Where flow the crowds in noisy waves?
Why these aromas, myrrh's sweet smoke 
 And censers all around abrim with fragrant herbs?
From Capitoline Hill to Tiber's waves,
 Above universal city's streets,
Why are the priceless rugs and purple stuffs
 Spread among garlands, laurels?
Why all this noise? The crash and thump of timpani?
 Are these heralds of joy or triumph?
Why wearing the miter hastes the holy father
 With gonfalon to the prayer house?
For whom doth thankful Rome's most valued gift,
 The crown, in his hands shimmer?
For whom this triumph? - 'tis for you, o blessed bard!
 For you this gift... Jerusalem's bard!
And now the joyful noise has reached the cell,
 Where Death joins battle with Torquatto,
Where death's winged spirit swoops
 Above the sufferer's blessed head.
Not weeping friends, nor praying monks,
 Nor honor's late rewards
Can tame the iron hand of fate,
 Which knows no mercy for the great.
Half-dead, he sees the horrid hour,
 And blesses it with joy,
And parting with life, one final time, 
 The wondrous swan exclaims:

"My friends, O let me catch a glimpse of splendid Rome,
 Where a too early grave awaits the bard!
Allow my glance to meet your hills and smoke,
 O, ancient sepulcher of citizens!
O blessed land of heroes and of wonders!
 Dust eloquent and ruins!
Azure and purple of cloudless skies,
 You, poplars; and you, ancient olives.
Eternal Tiber, you, who slake the thirst of every tribe,
 Sown with a universe of bones.
Doomed to an early end.
 I greet you from within these dreary walls!

It's done! I stand before the fatal borne
 To wild applause I won't step on Capitoline,
And glory's laurels on my feeble head
 Won't sweeten the bard's frightful lot.
From youth I have been everybody's puppet.
 I was an exile as a child,
I wandered, a poor traveler
 Under the sweet Italian sky,
What turns of fate did I not suffer?
 Where did the waves not toss my bark?
Where was I safe? Where was my daily bread
 Not spattered with the tears of sorrow?
Sorrento! Cradle of my woe-filled days,
 Where once at night, like a trembling Askania
Fate tore me from my mother's breast,
 From her embraces sweet and kisses, - 
Do you recall what tears I spilled in childhood
 Alas! Since then, a plaything of cruel fate,
I've known great suffering, the poverty of life.
 The depths by Fortune quarried.out
Beneath me, and the thunder never ceased!
 Driven from place to place, from land to land,
In vain I sought a harbor on the earth:
 I felt her hand relentless everywhere!
Her lightning everywhere harassed the bard!
 Not in a peasant's meager hut,
Nor e'en protected by Alphonso's palace,
 Nor under an obscure and silent roof,
Nor in the wilds, nor in the hills was my head safe.
 Embittered by glory and ignominy alike,
An exile's head, from cradle consigned
 Into the hands of an avenging goddess...

But friends! what clutches terribly my breast?
 Why does my heart lament and tremble?
Whence do I come? What awful path have I been following,
 And what behind me in the darkness gleams?
Ferrara...Furies...envy's serpent!..
 Whither? O, whither, murderers of my gift!
I am in harbor. Here is Rome. My brothers and my kin!
 Here are their tears and sweet embrace...
And Virgil's wreath upon the Capitoline hill.
 Thus, I fulfilled Appollo's task.
From my first youth, his dedicated priest,
 Through lightning, under raging skies,
I sang the grandeur glorious of bygone days,
 In bondage I did not betray my soul,
It harbors still the muses' sweet delight,
 And torments only reinforced my gift. 
It lived in wonderland, by Zion's walls,
 On Jordan's flowering shores;
It questioned you, impatient Cedron,
 And you serene asylum of Lebanon!
It raised you from the dead, o heroes hoary,
 To awesome glory's dazzle and grandeur:
It gazed upon you, Gottfried, ruler, king of kings,
 Magnificent and calm 'midst whistling arrows;
On you, o young Rinaldo, ardent as Achilles,
 In love and battle a blessed victor.
It watched you fly above the corpses of your foes,
 Like fire, like death, like an avenging angel...

And Tartarus is vanquished by a shining cross!
 O models of extraordinary valor!
O holy triumph of our ancestors,
 Long laid to rest! Pure faith victorious!
Torquato has invoked you from the depths of time:
 He sings - and you will never be forgot, - 
He sings, and gains the wreath of immortality,
 By glory woven and the muses' hands.

But it's too late! I stand before the fatal borne.
 To wild applause I won't step on Capitoline,
And glory's laurels on my feeble head
 Won't sweeten the bard's frightful lot.

He then fell mute, eyes burning with a dol