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Niccolò Degli Albizzi

Albizzi heraldic
 

Niccolò Degli Albizzi, 13th century Italian poet came from a Noble Florentine family.  Little is known of his life or of his work.  The verse below is one of the few works remaining from his writing.

  

Prolonged Sonnet

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.
 
(Niccolò Degli Albizzi (fl. 13th century), Italian poet. Prolonged Sonnet: When the Troops Were Returning from Milan (l. 5-11). PoBA. Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation, The. Charles Tomlinson, ed. (1980) Oxford University Press.)