Introduction
This song was written in Italian in 1849, when DGR gave it the title “Madonna
Consolata”.
DGR did not make his English
translation until October 1869, after he had recovered
the poem from his wife's
coffin. Both versions were embedded in the text of his
dramatic monologue,
<xref doc="a.1-1849.raw">A Last
Confession</xref>
.
Both Italian and English versions of this work recall DGR's translation project that
eventuated in the publication of
<xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">
<hi rend="i">The Early Italian Poets</hi>
</xref>
in 1861. The song is not at all
written as a pastiche of a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century work. Its style is much more
“modern”. Nonetheless, the reader is clearly meant to see the song as a
work whose historical descent traces itself back to the early Italian poets DGR translated in
his famous collection of 1861.
From a manuscript list DGR drew up in mid-1869, we know that the poem originally existed as a separate work, and that DGR thought to publish it as such in his 1870 volume.