Me safe and free from common chains, which bind,
In different modes, mankind,
Deign also from my brow this shame to sweep?
For as one sunk in sleep,
Methinks death ever present to my sight,
90 Yet when I would resist I have no arms to fight.
Full well I see my state, in nought deceived
By truth ill known, but rather forced by Love,
Who leaves not him to move
In honour, who too much his grace believed:
For o’er my heart from time to time I feel
A subtle scorn, a lively anguish, steal,
Whence every hidden thought,
Where all may see, upon my brow is writ.
For with such faith on mortal things to dote,
100 As unto God alone is just and fit
Disgraces worst the prize who covets most:
Should reason, amid things of sense, be lost,
This loudly calls her to the proper track:
But, when she would obey
And home return, ill habits keep her back,
And to my view portray
Her who was only born my death to be,
Too lovely in herself, too loved, alas! by me.
I neither know, to me what term of life
110 Heaven destined when on earth I came at first
To suffer this sharp strife.
’Gainst my own peace which I myself have nursed,
Nor can I, for the veil my body throws,
Yet see the time when my sad life may close.
I feel my frame begin
To fail, and vary each desire within:
And now that I believe my parting day
Is near at hand, or else not distant lies,
Like one whom losses wary make and wise,
120 I travel back in thought, where first the way,
The right-hand way, I left, to peace which led.
While through me shame and grief,
Recalling the vain past on this side spread,
On that brings no relief,
Passion, whose strength I now from habit, feel,
So great that it would dare with death itself to deal.
Song! I am here, my heart the while more cold
With fear than frozen snow,
Feels in its certain core death’s coming blow;
130 For thus, in weak self-communing, has roll’d
Of my vain life the better portion by:
Worse burden surely ne’er
Tried mortal man than that which now I bear
Though death be seated nigh,
For future life still seeking councils new,
I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worse pursue.
P366: Vergine bella, che di sol vestita
Beautiful Virgin! clothed with the sun,
Crown’d with the stars, who so the Eternal Sun
Well pleasedst that in thine his light he hid;
Love pricks me on to utter speech of thee,
And – feeble to commence without thy aid –
Of Him who on thy bosom rests in love.
Her I invoke who gracious still replies
To all who ask in faith,
Virgin! if ever yet
10 The misery of man and mortal things
To mercy moved thee, to my prayer incline;
Help me in this my strife,
Though I am but of dust, and thou heaven’s radiant Queen!
Wise Virgin! of that lovely number one
Of Virgins blest and wise,
Even the first and with the brightest lamp:
O solid buckler of afflicted hearts!
’Neath which against the blows of Fate and Death,
Not mere deliverance but great victory is;
20 Relief from the blind ardour which consumes
Vain mortals here below!
Virgin! those lustrous eyes,
Which tearfully beheld the cruel prints
In the fair limbs of thy beloved Son,
Ah! turn on my sad doubt,
Who friendless, helpless thus, for counsel come to thee!
O Virgin! pure and perfect in each part,
Maiden or Mother, from thy honour’d birth,
This life to lighten and the next adorn;
30 O bright and lofty gate of open’d heaven
By thee, thy Son and His, the Almighty Sire,
In our worst need to save us came below:
And, from amid all other earthly seats,
Thou only wert elect,
Virgin supremely blest!
The tears of Eve who turnedst into joy
Make me, thou canst, yet worthy of his grace,
O happy without end,
Who art in highest heaven a saint immortal shrined!
40 O holy Virgin! full of every good,
Who, in humility most deep and true,
To heaven art mounted, thence my prayers to hear,
That fountain thou of pity didst produce,
That sun of justice light, which calms and clears
Our age, else clogg’d with errors dark and foul.
Three sweet and precious names in thee combine,
Of mother, daughter, wife,
Virgin! with glory crown’d,
Queen of that King who has unloosed our bonds,
50 And free and happy made the world again,
By whose most sacred wounds,
I pray my heart to fix where true joys only are!
Virgin! of all unparallel’d, alone,
Who with thy beauties hast enamour’d Heaven,
Whose like has never been, nor e’er shall be;
For holy thoughts with chaste and pious acts
To the true God a sacred living shrine
In thy fecund virginity have made:
By thee, dear Mary, yet my life may be
60 Happy, if to thy prayers,
O Virgin meek and mild!
Where sin abounded grace shall more abound!
With bended knee and broken heart I pray
That thou my guide wouldst be,
And to such prosperous end direct my faltering way.
Bright Virgin! and immutable as bright,
O’er life’s tempestuous ocean the sure star
Each trusting mariner that truly guides,
Look down, and see amid this dreadful storm
70 How I am tost at random and alone,
And how already my last shriek is near,
Yet still in thee, sinful although and vile,
My soul keeps all her trust;
Virgin! I thee implore
Let not thy foe have triumph in my fall;
Remember that our sin made God himself,
To free us from its chain,
Within thy virgin womb our image on Him take!
Virgin! what tears already have I shed,
80 Cherish’d what dreams and breathed what prayers in vain
But for my own worse penance and sure loss;
Since first on Arno’s shore I saw the light
Till now, whate’er I sought, wherever turn’d,
My life has pass’d in torment and in tears,
For mortal loveliness in air, act, speech,
Has seized and soil’d my soul:
O Virgin! pure and good,
Delay not till I reach my life’s last year;
Swifter than shaft and shuttle are, my days
90 ’Mid misery and sin
Have vanish’d all, and now Death only is behind!
Virgin! She now is dust, who, living, held
My heart in grief, and plunged it since in gloom;
She knew not of my many ills this one,
And had she known, what since befell me still
Had been the same, for every other wish
Was death to me and ill renown for her;
But, Queen of heaven, our Goddess – if to thee
Such homage be not s
in
100 Virgin! of matchless mind,
Thou knowest now the whole; and that, which else
No other can, is nought to thy great power:
Deign then my grief to end,
Thus honour shall be thine, and safe my peace at last!
Virgin! in whom I fix my every hope,
Who canst and will’st assist me in great need,
Forsake me not in this my worst extreme,
Regard not me but Him who made me thus;
Let his high image stamp’d on my poor worth
110 Towards one so low and lost thy pity move:
Medusa spells have made me as a rock
Distilling a vain flood;
Virgin! my harass’d heart
With pure and pious tears do thou fulfil,
That its last sigh at least may be devout,
And free from earthly taint,
As was my earliest vow ere madness filled my veins!
Virgin! benevolent, and foe of pride,
Ah! let the love of our one Author win,
120 Some mercy for a contrite humble heart:
For, if her poor frail mortal dust I loved
With loyalty so wonderful and long,
Much more my faith and gratitude for thee.
From this my present sad and sunken state
If by thy help I rise,
Virgin! to thy dear name
I consecrate and cleanse my thoughts, speech, pen,
My mind, and heart with all its tears and sighs;
Point then that better path,
130 And with complacence view my changed desires at last.
The day must come, nor distant far its date,
Time flies so swift and sure,
O peerless and alone!
When death my heart, now conscience struck, shall seize:
Commend me, Virgin! then to thy dear Son,
True God and Very Man,
That my last sigh in peace may, in his arms, be breathed!
Bohn’s Illustrated Library (1859)
Bohn’s Illustrated Library: The Sonnets, Triumphs and other Poems of Petrarch, Now First Completely Translated into English Verse by Various Hands, with a Life of the Poet by Thomas Campbell. Of the three anonymous authors of sonnets in Bohn we know almost nothing, and of the first nothing at all. The Dictionary of National Biography attributes the second, Anon. 1777, Sonnets and Odes Translated from the Italian of Petrarch (London, 1777), to Dr John Nott of Bristol (see his section, above). The third, Anon. Ox. 1795, Translations Chiefly from the Italian of Petrarch and Metastasio (Oxford, 1795), is attributed by the British Museum catalogue to Thomas Le Mesurier of Guernsey (1757–1822), clergyman, Fellow of New College, Oxford, and anti-Catholic polemicist (Watson, English Petrarchans, pp. 10–11).
ANON.
P5: Quando io movo i sospiri a chiamar voi
5. He Plays Upon the Name Laureta or Laura
IN sighs when I outbreathe your cherish’d name,
That name which love has writ upon my heart,
LAUd instantly upon my doting tongue,
At the first thought of its sweet sound, is heard;
Your REgal state, which I encounter next,
Doubles my valour in that high emprize:
But TAcit ends the word; your praise to tell
Is fitting load for better backs than mine.
Thus all who call you, by the name itself,
10 Are taught at once to LAUd and to REvere,
O worthy of all reverence and esteem!
Save that perchance Apollo may disdain
That mortal tongue of his immortal boughs
Should ever so presume as e’en to speak.
P51: Poco era ad appressarsi agli occhi miei
42. Such are his Sufferings that he Envies the Insensibility of Marble
Had but the light which dazzled them afar
Drawn but a little nearer to mine eyes,
Methinks I would have wholly changed my form,
Even as in Thessaly her form she changed:
But if I cannot lose myself in her
More than I have – small mercy though it won –
I would to-day in aspect thoughtful be,
Of harder stone than chisel ever wrought,
Of adamant, or marble cold and white,
10 Perchance through terror, or of jasper rare
And therefore prized by the blind greedy crowd.
Then were I free from this hard heavy yoke
Which makes me envy Atlas, old and worn,
Who with his shoulders brings Morocco night.
P159: In qual parte del ciel, in quale ydea
126. He Extols the Beauty and Virtue of Laura
In what celestial sphere – what realm of thought,
Dwelt the right model from which Nature drew
That fair and beautous face, in which we view
Her utmost power, on earth, divinely wrought?
What sylvan queen – what nymph by fountain sought,
Upon the breeze such golden tresses threw?
When did such virtues one sole breast imbue?
Though with my death her chief perfection’s fraught.
For heavenly beauty he in vain inquires,
10 Who ne’er beheld her eyes, celestial stain,
Where’er she turns around their brilliant fires:
He knows not how Love wounds, and heals again,
Who knows not how she sweetly smiles, respires
The sweetest sighs, and speaks in sweetest strain!
P232: Vincitore Alessandro l’ira vinse
196. The Evil Results of Unrestrained Anger
What though the ablest artists of old time
Left us the sculptured bust, the imaged form
Of conq’ring Alexander, wrath o’ercame
And made him for the while than Philip less?
Wrath to such fury valiant Tydeus drove
That dying he devour’d his slaughter’d foe;
Wrath made not Sylla merely blear of eye,
But blind to all, and kill’d him in the end.
What Valentinian knew that to such pain
10 Wrath leads, and Ajax, he whose death it wrought,
Strong against many, ’gainst himself at last.
Wrath is brief madness, and, when unrestrain’d,
Long madness, which its master often leads
To shame and crime, and haply e’en to death.
ANONYMOUS 1777
P108: Aventuroso píu d’altro terreno
85. He Apostrophizes the Spot Where Laura First Saluted him
AH, happiest spot of earth! in this sweet place
Love first beheld my condescending fair
Retard her steps, to smile with courteous grace
On me, and smiling glad the ambient air.
The deep-cut image, wrought with skilful care,
Time shall from hardest adamant efface,
Ere from my mind that smile it shall erase,
Dear to my soul! which memory planted there.
Oft as I view thee, heart-enchanging soil!
With amorous awe I’ll seek – delightful toil!
Where yet some traces of her footsteps lie.
And if fond Love still warms her generous breast,
When’er you see her, gentle friend! Request
The tender tribute of a tear – a sigh.
P112: Sennuccio, i’vo’ che sappi in qual manera
89. He Relates to his Friend Sennuccio His Unhappiness and the Varied Mood of Laura
To thee, Sennuccio, fain would I declare,
To sadden life, what wrongs, what woes I find:
Still glow my wonted flames; and, though resign’d
To Laura’s fickle will, no change I bear.
All humble now, then haughty is my fair;
Now meek, then proud; now pitying, then unkind:
Softness and tenderness now sway her mind;
Then do her looks disdain a
nd anger wear.
Here would she sweetly sing, there sit awhile,
10 Here bend her step, and there her step retard;
Here her bright eyes my easy heart ensnared;
There would she speak fond words, here lovely smile;
There frown contempt; – such wayward cares I prove
By night, by day; so wills our tyrant Love!
ANON. OX. 1795
P90: Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi
69. He Paints the Beauties of Laura, Protesting his Unalterable Love
LOOSE to the breeze her golden tresses flow’d
Wildly in thousand mazy ringlets blown,
And from her eyes unconquer’d glances shone,
Those glances now so sparingly bestow’d.
And true or false, meseem’d some signs she show’d
As o’er her cheek soft pity’s hue was thrown;
I whose whole breast with love’s soft food was sown,
What wonder if at once my bosom glow’d?
Graceful she moved, with more than mortal mein,
10 In form an angel: and her accents won
Upon the ear with more than human sound.
A spirit heavenly pure, a living sun,
Was what I saw; and if no more ’twere seen,
T’ unbend the bow will never heal the wound.
LEIGH HUNT (1784–1859)
Voluminous poet, liberal political and literary essayist, Hunt was the friend of Hazlitt, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Carlyle. He was present at the cremation of Shelley and composed the epitaph for his tomb at Rome. He was the quintessential Romantic. Text from Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (1844).
P126: Chiare, fresche et dolci acque
Petrarch’s Contemplation of Death in the Bower of Laura
Clear, fresh, and dulcet streams,
Which the fair shape, who seems
To me sole woman, haunted at noon-tide;
Fair bough, so gently fit
(I sigh to think of it.)
Which lent a pillar to her lovely side;
And turf, and flowers bright-eyed,
O’er which her folded gown
Flow’d like an angel’s down
10 And you, O holy air and hush’d,
Where first my heart at her sweet glances gush’d;
Give ear, give ear, with one consenting,
To my last words, my last and my lamenting.
Petrarch in English Page 22