June / Folgore de San Geminiano

from Of the Months

June

In June I give you a close-wooded fell,
    With crowns of thicket coil'd about its head,
    With thirty villas twelve times turreted,
All girdling round a little citadel;
And in the midst a springhead and fair well
    With thousand conduits branch'd and shining speed,
    Wounding the garden and the tender mead,
Yet to the freshen'd grass acceptable.
And lemons, citrons, dates, and oranges,
    And all the fruits whose savour is most rare,
Shall shine within the shadow of your trees;
    And every one shall be a lover there;
Until your life, so fill'd with courtesies,
    Throughout the world be counted debonair.

~~
Folgore de San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[]

Folgore de San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Peasants picking fruit, from Une Compilation d’œuvres d’Art Médiévales Liées: 

Aux Pommes et aux Vergers, 19th century. Courtesy Orchard Notes.