Poem of the Week – When the Troops Were Returning from Milan by Niccolo Degli Albizzi
Niccolo Degli Albizzi was a Renaissance-era Italian poet from a noble Florentine family. Little is known of his life, and few of his works survive. Still, D.G Rossetti, the pre-Raphaelite poet and eager promoter of Italian literature, included this week’s poem in his The Early Italian Poets anthology, published in 1861. Though it exceeds the fourteen-line restrictions of a sonnet, its rhyming scheme and sentiment are indebted to the sonnet style popularised by Albizzi’s contemporary, Petrarch.
The poem recounts the sorry sight of a procession of Roman soldiers returning from a battle in Milan. Dejected and exhausted, they eke their way through the eternal city as the poet watches on. The recent events in Afghanistan have once again revealed the enormous emotional cost that any conflict inflicts on combatants. The response of British soldiers who served in Afghanistan to the withdrawal of Nato troops and the reemergence of the Taliban is sadly reminiscent of the despondent army described slouching through Rome.
War eviscerates the vitality of young men and women. Unfortunately, this sorrowful consequence in Afghanistan affects far more civilians than soldiers, but the price our soldiers paid during their tours of that beleaguered country ought to be acknowledged.
We hope you enjoy this week’s poem as much as we did.
When the Troops Were Returning from Milan
By Niccolo Degli Albizzi
If you could see, fair brother, how dead beat
The fellows look who come through Rome today, –
Black yellow smoke-dried visages, – you’d say
They thought their haste at going all too fleet.
Their empty victual-wagons up the street
Over the bridge dreadfully sound and sway;
Their eyes, as hanged men’s, turning the wrong way;
And nothing on their backs, or heads, or feet.
One sees the ribs and all the skeletons
Of their gaunt horses; and a sorry sight
Are the torn saddles, crammed with straw and stones.
They are ashamed, and march throughout the night;
Stumbling for hunger, on their marrowbones;
Like barrels rolling, jolting, in this plight.
Their arms all gone, not even their swords are saved;
And each as silent as a man being shaved.