Bartolomeo di Sant' Angelo. “Sonnet. He jests concerning his Poverty.”

The subject of the poem and its witty, casual manner must have appealed directly to DGR, whose attitude to his own poverty in his younger years was very similar. DGR's source text is Poeti del Primo Secolo (I. 431). The translation is close, except for the final two words, which DGR threw in to complete the rhyme.

This is almost certainly an early translation, probably the late 1840s.

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.