When still shall be my heart and dry my eyes;
10 Nay, first we’ll see cold fire and flaming snow:
A year shall pass for every thread of hair
Upon my head – and still there will be years.
Aye, but since time so hurries on the years
And soon we all must fare to Charon’s shore –
What matter if with blonde or hoary hair?
I’ll follow faithfully my tender laurel
Through scorching heat or freezing ice and snow
Until the last day close these anxious eyes.
Never has earth beheld such radiant eyes –
20 Nor in our days nor in the ancient years –
As those that vanquish me as summer snow.
A flood of tears, as swollen stream to shore,
Flows from my heart to lave that cruel laurel
Of gleaming limbs and precious golden hair.
Sooner, I fear, shall I change mien and hair
Than find some look of pity in the eyes
Of my fair idol, my sweet living laurel.
Today – well counts the heart! – marks seven years
I’ve wended sighing over sea and shore
30 By night and day, through rain and sleet and snow.
Within afire, without as white as snow
With constant thought though sadly fading hair
I’ll go my restless way from shore to shore
Bringing perhaps compassion to some eyes
Who’ll read my sorry plaint in future years –
If lives the glory of my mortal laurel.
For Laura’ll melt my soul as sun melts snow –
Oh hair of gold above bright sapphire eyes! –
And bring my ship of years too soon ashore.
GRAHAM HOUGH (1908–90)
Hough was Professor of English at Cambridge University and Fellow of Christ’s College. Sonnet from Legends and Pastorals (1961).
P62: Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni
Sonnet for Good Friday
Father of heaven, after the lost days,
After the nights eaten with desire,
Wondering at the fire
That dries my heart of all enterprise,
Please you to pour new grace
Into my veins empty of all power;
Please you to let my adversary tire
Of digging pitfalls for me, go his ways.
Lord, unpitied ten years I have served
10 This tyrant. I who dare
Nothing against him feel him the more harsh.
Pity this misery no man deserved,
Teach my thoughts how to forget their care,
Forget their care, remembering your cross.
JAMES WYATT COOK (1932– )
James Wyatt Cook was Professor of English Literature at Albion College, Michigan. From his Petrarch’s Songbook Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta: A Verse Translation (1995) the series that runs from P23 – the first and longest canzone in the sequence – until the second sestina (P30) has been chosen to give some sense of the enormous variety of subjects in any sample group of Petrarch’s poetry.
P23: Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade
In the sweet season of my early youth
That saw break forth, almost in grasstime still,
The passion wild that grew into my bane –
Because my singing sweetens bitter grief,
I’ll sing how once I lived in liberty
While in my dwelling place Love was disdained.
Next I shall tell how scorn vexed Love too sorely;
Recount, in turn, what chance befell and why,
How I was made a warning to the world.
10 Although elsewhere my torture
Cruel is penned – indeed, it’s wearied now
A thousand quills – in almost every vale
The sound of my grave sighs reverberates
And testifies my life is full of pain.
And if my memory fails to serve me here
As well as once it used to do, let my
Woes pardon that, and one thought that alone
So grieves it that I’m made to turn my back
On all thoughts else, forget myself perforce;
20 That thought my being holds, and I the husk.
Since that day Love at first laid siege to me,
Indeed, I tell you, many years had passed
So that my youthful countenance was changed,
And frozen thoughts had hardened round my heart
To make an almost adamantine glaze
That would not let the hard effect abate.
No tear yet bathed my breast; none slumber broke,
And that which in myself I could not find,
In others’ seemed a miracle to me.
30 Woe: What I am: What I was:
Praise life at end; at evening praise the day.
The cruel one of whom I tell, aware
That, after all, no arrow’s point of his
Had even penetrated past my robe,
A powerful lady took into his train
’Gainst whom not skill, nor strength, nor begging grace,
Availed me then nor yet avails me now.
Those two transformed me into what I am,
Turned me a man alive, to laurel green
40 That shed no leaf for all the winter’s chill.
What I became when first awareness dawned
Of this transfiguration of my self:
I saw my locks become that laurel frond
That I had hoped, indeed, would be their crown;
The feet I stood and walked and ran upon,
As to the spirit every limb responds
I sensed become two roots beside the waves –
Not of Peneus – of a statelier stream;
Felt arms transmute themselves, become two boughs:
50 My blood runs no less cold
Than did it when, arrayed in plumage white,
My hope plunged stricken by a thunderbolt,
Lay dead because he’d risen far too high.
Thus, since I knew not where or when I might
Recover him, by night and day, in tears,
Where hope was reft from me, I went alone,
Searching along the banks and in the deeps,
And never more did my tongue cease to tell,
While it could do so, of his dreadful fall.
60 Hence I, with the swan’s song, its color took.
Thus I drifted past those banks well-loved,
And though I wished to speak, went singing ever,
Crying “Mercy” in that alien voice;
Nor could I ever harmonize the notes –
Now sweet, now soft – of amorous lament
So that her stern, fierce heart would yield to me.
For what was there to hear? How memory sears me:
But even more of this – or rather more
About that sweet and bitter foe of mine
70 Necessity bids me tell,
Though such as she transcends the power of speech.
That girl, who with a look rips souls away,
Unsealed my breast, seized with her hand my heart,
Instructing me: ‘Breathe not a word of this:’
I saw her next in altered guise, alone
So that, mistaking her – oh human sense
I, fearful, spoke the truth to her instead,
At once, then, she resumed her former face
And made of me – alas, poor wretch – a stone,
80 One half alive, disheartened and dismayed.
She spoke with such a troubled countenance,
It made me tremble there within that rock
To hear: ‘I am perhaps, not whom you think;’
And to myself I said: ‘If she frees me
From stone, no life can sadden or annoy.’
(To make me weep, my Lord, return, I pray)
I know not how, but thence I dragged m
y feet,
Accusing no one other than myself,
Suspended between life and death all day.
90 But, since my time grows short,
And with desire my pen cannot keep pace,
Much written in my mind I shall omit,
And only speak of certain things that will
Be wonders to whoever hears of them.
Death was within me, coiled about my heart;
Nor could my silence free it from her hand,
Nor succor give to my enfeebled powers;
To speak aloud had been forbidden me,
So I cried out with paper and with ink:
100 ‘No: I’m not mine; if I die, yours the cost.’
I thought in her eyes surely I would change
From one disdained to one deserving grace,
And this hope had made me presumptuous.
But humbleness will sometimes blow out scorn,
Sometimes inflame it: this I quickly learned
In darkness shrouded for a season long,
For at those prayers my candle had gone out,
And I could not recover anywhere
Her shadow or some vestige of her feet.
110 Like one who sleeps along
His way, one day I weary fell upon
The grass; accusing there that ray of light
Which fled, I gave free rein to woeful tears,
Allowing them to fall just as they would.
And never did snow melt beneath the sun
The way I felt myself grow faint and change
Into a fountain underneath a beech.
A long and tearful time I held that course.
Who’s heard of fountains born from mortal man?
120 I speak of things undoubted and well known.
God only shapes the soul’s nobility;
From no one else can she attain such grace.
She keeps her likeness to her Maker’s state;
And thus she’s never weary of forgiving
Whoever with a contrite mien and heart
Comes seeking mercy after many faults.
And if against her nature she endures
Long importunity, she mirrors Him –
Does so that sin may be more greatly feared;
130 One does not honestly repent
Of one ill-deed who’s ready to do more.
Since, by compassion touched, my lady deigned
To look on me, she saw and understood
My penance had been equal to my sin;
Benign, she led me back to my first state.
But nothing on this earth a wise man trusts:
For when I pled once more, my nerves and bones
Were turned to hardest flint; and, shaken thus,
I lived a voice, still burdened as of old,
140 Calling on Death, and her alone by name.
An errant, doleful spirit (I recall)
Through caverns tenantless, unvisited
I wept my uncurbed daring many years
And found at length the end of that disease,
And turned again from flint to earthly limbs –
To make me feel the sorrow more, I think.
How far afield my passion I pursued:
One day, as usual, I went to hunt;
There that untamed one, lovely and severe,
150 Stood naked in a fount,
While down on her the sun burned, ardently.
Because no other sight contented me,
I paused to gaze on her, and she, ashamed,
Whether in vengeance or to hide herself,
With her hands splashed the water in my face.
The truth I’ll tell (though it may falsehood seem):
I felt myself drawn forth from my own shape,
And to a stag, alone and wandering
From wood to wood, I swiftly was transformed,
160 And still I flee the baying of my hounds.
O song, I never was that cloud of gold
Which in a priceless rain came falling once –
The one in which Jove’s fire, in part, was spent –
But, lit by one sweet look, I’ve been a flame,
Yes, and that bird which shears the upper air,
Bearing her high whom my words celebrate;
Nor could I for a new form learn to part
From that first laurel whose sweet shade yet sweeps
Every delight less lovely from my heart.
P24: Se l’onorata fronde che prescrive
Had not those honored leaves that tame the wrath
Of heaven when high Jove thunders, not denied
To me that crown which customarily
Adorns one who, while shaping verses, writes,
I’d be a friend to these your goddesses,
The ones this age abandons wretchedly;
But far that wrong already drives me off
From the inventress of the olive tree.
Indeed, no Ethiopic dust boils up
10 Beneath the hottest sun the way I blush
At losing such a treasured gift of mine.
Search out, therefore, a fountain more serene,
For mine of every cordial stands in need,
Save only that which I well forth in tears.
P27: Il successor di Carlo, che la chioma
Charles’ successor who now adorns his head
With his forefather’s crown has seized, indeed,
Weapons to crush the horns of Babylon
And all of those who take their name from her.
Christ’s vicar, laden with his keys and cloak
Returns to his own seat; and so, unless
Some misadventure hinders him, he’ll view
Bologna first, and then see noble Rome.
Your mild and gentle lamb has beaten down
10 The savage wolves; and thus will meet their end
Whoever puts asunder lawful loves.
Console her, therefore – she who yet stands guard –
And comfort Rome who for her spouse laments;
Gird on the sword at last for Jesus now.
P28: O aspettata in ciel beata e bella
O fair and blessed soul whom Heaven awaits
You go arrayed in our humanity
Not cumbered by the flesh as others are;
Henceforth those roads will seem less hard to you
By which you pass to His realm from below –
God’s chosen one, handmaid obedient:
Behold afresh your vessel that has now
Already put behind it this blind world
To steer for the best harbor,
10 Solaced by a sweet wind from the west.
That breeze, amidst this dark and shadowy vale
Where we lament our own and others’, woes
Will pilot you, freed from your ancient bonds,
Along the straightest course
To that true orient, where she is bound.
Perhaps the loving and devoted prayers
Of mortal beings, and their sacred tears,
Have gone before supernal mercy’s throne;
But maybe they were not enough, nor such
20 That by their merit, one jot they might turn
Aside eternal justice from its course.
But in His grace that kindly King who rules
In Heaven looks toward that sacred place
Where he hung on the cross;
Hence in the breast of this new Charlemagne
That vengeance breathes which, tardy, saps our strength –
Because through long years Europe sighed for it.
Thus Christ brings succor to His cherished spouse
So that his voice alone
30 Makes Babylon stand quaking and afraid.
All dwellers from the mountains to Garonne,
Between the Rhone, and Rhine, and salty waves,
To those most Christian banners rally now;
And all who ever prized true valor, from<
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The far horizon to the Pyrenees
Will empty Spain to follow Aragon;
From England, with the isles that ocean bathes
Between the Oxcart and the Pillars – from,
In short, wherever sounds
40 The teaching of most sacred Helicon –
All varied in their tongues and arms and dress,
Divine love spurs them to high enterprise.
Indeed, what love so lawful, of such worth?
What sons, what women ever
Have been the grounds for such a righteous wrath?
There is a region of the world that lies
In ice forever, under freezing snow
Far distant from the pathway of the sun.
There, subject to days overcast and short,
50 There teems a folk by nature foes of peace,
A people that is not bereaved by death.
Should these prove more devout than usual
And with Teutonic rage take up the sword,
Then without doubt you’ll learn
How much to prize Chaldeans, Arabs, Turks,
And all who place their hopes in pagan gods
From here to that sea red with bloody waves –
An unclothed, frightened, backward people who
Never close with swords; instead
60 They trust the wind to guide their every shot.
The time has therefore come to draw our necks
From out the ancient yoke, to tear away
The veil that has been wound around our eyes.
Show noble genius, which, by Heaven’s grace
From Apollo, the immortal one, is yours;
And here let eloquence display its power,
Now with the tongue, now celebrated script;
For if you do not wonder, reading of
Orpheus and Amphion,
70 Then marvel not when Italy, with all
Her sons, by your clear sermon’s note is so
Aroused that she takes up the lance for Christ.
For if this ancient matriarch sees truth,
She’ll find no cause of hers
Was ever so appropriate or fair.
To profit from rich treasures you have turned
The ancient pages and the modern too,
And flown to Heaven, though in earthly form;
You know how, from the reign of Mars, own son
80 To great Augustus, who – thrice triumphing
Three times adorned his locks with laurel green,
Rome oftentimes, because of others’ wounds,
Gave liberally so much of its own blood.
Then why is Rome not now –
Not ‘liberal’ – but thankful and devout
In taking vengeance for these cruel affronts
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