November / Folgore da San Geminiano

November

Let baths and wine-butts be November's due,
    With thirty mule-loads of broad gold-pieces;
    And canopy with silk the streets that freeze;
And keep your drink-horns steadily in view.
Let every trader have his gain of you:
    Clareta shall your lamps and torches send, —
    Caeta, citron-candies without end; 

And each shall drink, and help his neighbour to.
And let the cold be great, and the fire grand:
    And still for fowls, and pastries sweetly wrought,
        For hares and kids, for roast and boil'd, be sure
You always have your appetites at hand;
And then let night howl and heaven fall, so nought
    Be miss'd that makes a man's bed-furniture.

~~
Folgore da 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 da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

from Livre d'heures de la reine Yolande, 15th century. Wikimedia Commons.