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After the vast deep oceans overwhelmed, and drowned an ancient and criminal world, Father Noah, God so loved your goodness He chose your seed to repeople the world with things new born. If he were to look down at this foul time, a second tempest, wild, fierce, scourging floods would threaten us, but not of water--human blood would stream across this earth. So I pray when the storm comes, my mind holds, I stay innocent, humble, don't swerve, don't turn away from tasks and cares God imposes upon me, on myself live, in His wounds, God's ark, on faith, safe, mind cleared, freed of this deadly mist, each dark shadow. |
An image of the Italian text from Visconti's 1840 edition |
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Notes: From V XCVI:256 and B S1:111:140; R XXIX:454; MSs L, A, CASI, Pr; Valgrisi 112. Translation: Bainton 202. A first in a series of three sonnets to Noah. Reference: Genesis 5-10. But see Alfred de Vigny's Déluge. A plethora of illustrations, paintings, legends, and dramatic scenes and stories had grown up around Noah. Michelangelo included depictions of Noah's sacrifice, drunkenness after the Flood and his unhappy contemporaries on the Sistine ceiling; Giovanni Bellini and Benozzo Gozzoli depicted the scene realistically. Key |
