Petrarch in English

by Thomas Roche (ed)

  In company with Mary’s glorious Son?

  How in defences human can the foe

  Repose his hope, when Christ

  90 Stands firm in the opposing company?

  Consider Xerxes’ reckless impudence;

  When with ingenious bridges, he outraged

  The sea so he could trample on our shores;

  And you will see those Persian women who

  Were draped in brown to mourn their husbands’ deaths,

  The sea of Salamis all red with blood.

  Not only does the miserable ruin

  Of that unhappy people of the East

  Foretell your victory;

  100 But Marathon, that deadly pass as well

  The Lion held with such a tiny band,

  And countless frays of which you’ve heard and read.

  Most meet it is, therefore, that you subject

  Both knee and mind to God

  Who now preserves your life for such great good.

  Song, Italy you’ll see, and see the shore

  Revered, which neither stream nor sea nor hill

  Can keep from me nor from my eyes conceal,

  But only Love who, with his lofty lamp,

  110 Attracts me more, the more that I catch fire

  To habit Nature cannot stand opposed;

  Now, Song, go forth; lag not behind your fellows,

  Not just under kerchiefs

  Does Love reside, who makes us laugh and weep.

  P29: Verdi panni, sanguigni oscuri o persi

  Green fabrics, blood-red, dark or violet,

  You never gowned a lady

  Nor ever in a blond tress wound gold hair

  As fair as this that strips free will from me;

  It draws me in such fashion from the path

  Of liberty that no less heavy yoke

  Can I endure to bear.

  Yet if the soul to which ill counsel comes

  Still sometimes takes up arms

  10 To grieve when suffering leads it to doubt,

  The sudden sight of her will call it back

  From its unchecked desire, will rid my heart

  Of frenzied schemes, since seeing her makes sweet

  All my indignity.

  For all my former sufferings for Love,

  For those I still must bear

  Till she who gnaws my heart shall make it whole –

  She rebel ’gainst the mercy it still craves –

  Let vengeance come; save only that against

  20 Humility, let pride and wrath not block

  Nor bar my passage fair.

  The day and hour I gazed upon the lights

  In that fair black and white

  Which drove me from the place where love rushed

  Of this new grievous life, that time was root,

  And she in whom our age admires itself;

  Whoever looks upon her unafraid

  Is surely lead or wood.

  No teardrop, then, caused by her eyes yet spills

  30 From mine to bathe my heart,

  Which felt that arrow first on my left side;

  None causes me to shun my own desire,

  For on the proper part this sentence falls;

  For her, my soul sighs, and how meet it is

  That she should wash my wounds.

  My thoughts to me contrary have become:

  Once one, like me exhausted,

  Turned the beloved sword upon herself;

  I don’t ask this one, though, to set me free

  40 For every other road to heaven’s less straight;

  Yes, to that glorious realm one can’t aspire

  In a more steady ship.

  O stars benign that were companions of

  That blessed womb when its

  Fair issue slipped into this world below:

  An earthly star is she; as laurel leaf

  Its green, so she the prize of chastity

  Preserves; there strikes no lightning, never blows

  Base wind to bend her low.

  50 I know well that my wish to catch in verse

  Her praises would exhaust

  Whoever, worthiest, set his hand to write.

  What cell of memory is there to hold

  Such virtue, such great beauty as one sees

  Who gazes in those eyes – mark of all worth

  And sweet key of my heart.

  While the sun wheels,

  Love will not have a pledge

  Lady, more dear than you.

  P30: Giovene donna sotto un verde lauro

  A youthful lady under a green laurel

  I saw once, whiter and more cold than snow

  Untouched by sun for many, many, years;

  I liked her speech, fair features, and her hair

  So much that I keep her before my eyes –

  And ever shall, though I’m on hill or shore.

  And thus my thoughts will stay along the shore,

  Where no green leaf is found upon the laurel;

  When I have stilled my heart and dried my eyes,

  10 We’ll see fire freeze and into flame burst snow;

  I don’t have strands as many in this hair

  As, waiting for that day, there would be years.

  Because time flies, however, and since years

  Soon flee until one fetches on death’s shore –

  Whether with locks of brown or with white hair –

  I’ll follow still the shade of that sweet laurel

  Through the most parching sun and through the snow

  Until the final day shall close these eyes.

  Never before were seen such lovely eyes

  20 Not in our age nor in man’s pristine years;

  They make me melt just as the sun does snow,

  From whence a tearful river floods the shore –

  Love leads it to the foot of that hard laurel

  Whose branches are of diamond, gold its hair.

  I fear the changing of my face and hair

  Before, with pity true, she shows her eyes –

  My idol, sculpted in the living laurel;

  For if my count errs not, it’s seven years

  Today that I have sighed from shore to shore

  30 By night and day, in heat and in the snow.

  Still fire within, though outside whitest snow

  With these thoughts only, though with altered hair,

  Ever in tears, I’ll wander every shore,

  Perhaps creating pity in the eyes

  Of persons born from hence a thousand years –

  If, tended well, so long can live a laurel.

  In sun, the gold and topaz on the snow

  Are conquered by blond hair close by those eyes

  That lead my years so swiftly towards the shore.

  MARK MUSA (1934– )

  Musa was Professor of French and Italian Literature at Indiana University. P70 is a bravura piece in which Petrarch uses as the last line of succeeding stanzas the first line of the famous poems by his predecessors – Arnaut Daniel, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante and Cino da Pistoia – and ends with the first line of his own Canzone 23, the first canzone in the collection. P71–P73 are called the ‘tre sorelle’ because they have the same stanza and rhyme scheme. Text from Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (1996).

  P50: Ne la stagion che ’l ciel rapido inchina

  It is the time the rapid heavens bend

  toward the West, the time our own day flees

  to some expectant race beyond, perhaps,

  the time an old and weary pilgrim-woman

  feeling the loneliness of foreign lands,

  doubles her pace, hastening more and more;

  and then at her day’s end,

  though she is all alone,

  at least she is consoled

  10 by resting and forgetting for awhile

  the labour and the pain of her past road.

  But, oh, whatever pain the day bri
ngs me

  grows more and more the moment

  the eternal light begins to fade from us.

  When the sun’s burning wheels begin to flame,

  in order to give way to night, and shadows

  are now cast deeper by the highest mountains,

  the avid workman packs away his tools

  and with the words of mountain songs he clears

  20 the weight of that day’s labour from his chest;

  and then he spreads his table

  all full of meager food

  like acorns of whose praises

  the whole world sings and manages to shun.

  But let who will find joy from time to time,

  for I’ve not had, I will not say a happy,

  but just one restful hour,

  for all the turning of the sky and stars.

  And when the shepherd sees the great sphere’s rays

  30 are falling toward the nest in which it dwells

  and in the east the country turning dark,

  he stands up straight and with his trusty crook,

  he leaves the grass and springs and beech’s shade,

  moving his flock quietly on its way;

  then far away from people

  a hut or kind of cave

  he weaves out of green leaves,

  and there without a care he lies and sleeps.

  But, ah, cruel Love, you drive me on to chase

  40 the voice, the steps, the prints of a wild beast

  who is destroying me;

  you do not catch her: she crouches and she flees.

  And sailors on their ship when sun is set

  in some protected cove let their limbs drop

  upon hard boards and sleep beneath coarse canvas.

  But I, though sun may dive into the waves

  and leave behind his back all that is Spain,

  Granada and Morocco and the Pillars,

  and though all men and women,

  50 animals and the world

  may come to calm their ills –

  yet I cannot end my insistent anguish;

  it pains me that each day augments my grief,

  for here I am still growing in this love

  for nearly ten years now,

  wondering who will ever set me free.

  And (to relieve my pain a bit by talking)

  I see at evening oxen coming home,

  freed from the fields and furrows they have ploughed –

  60 why, then, must I not be free of my sighs

  at least sometimes? Why not my heavy yoke?

  Why day and night must my eyes still be wet?

  Oh what I did that time

  when I fixed them upon

  the beauty of her face

  to carve it in my heart’s imagination

  whence neither by coercion nor by art

  could it be moved – not till I am the prey

  of one who all does part!

  70 And could she even then I am not sure.

  My song, if being with me

  from morning until night

  has made you join my party,

  you will not show yourself in any place

  and will care little to be praised by others –

  it will suffice to think from hill to hill

  how I have been consumed

  by fire of the living stone I cling to.

  P52: Non al suo amante più Diana piacque

  Diana never pleased her lover more,

  when just by chance all of her naked body

  he saw bathing within the chilly waters,

  than did the simple mountain shepherdess

  please me, the while she bathed the pretty veil

  that holds her lovely blonde hair in the breeze.

  So that even now in hot sunlight she makes me

  tremble all over with the chill of love.

  P53: Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi

  Noble spirit, you who informs those members

  inside of which there dwells in pilgrimage

  a lord of valor who is keen and wise:

  now that you have achieved the honored staff

  with which you guide Rome and its erring people

  and call her back to her old way of life,

  to you I speak for I see nowhere else

  that virtuous ray extinguished in the world

  and find no one ashamed of doing wrong.

  10 For what Italy waits or yearns I know not,

  for she does not appear to feel her woes –

  she’s idle, slow, and old;

  will no one wake her, will she sleep forever?

  If only I could grab her by the hair!

  I have no hope she’ll ever move her head

  in sluggish sleep, loud as the shouts may be,

  so gravely she’s oppressed and by such weight;

  but destiny now places in your arms,

  that can shake her with strength and wake her up,

  20 the head of all of us, the city Rome.

  Now get your hands into those venerable locks

  with confidence, into her unkept hair,

  and pull the lazy one out of the mud.

  I who all night and day weep for her torment

  have placed almost all of my hope in you

  for if Mars’ progeny

  should ever raise their eyes to their own honor,

  it seems such grace will come in your own times.

  The ancient walls which all the world still fears

  30 and loves and trembles, every time it thinks

  of turning back to look at those past times,

  recalling those tombstones which hold the bodies

  of men who will not be without great fame

  until our universe dissolves away,

  and everything involving this one ruin,

  through you they hope to mend all of the faults.

  O great Scipioni, O faithful Brutus,

  how pleased you must be now if news reached you

  down there of how well placed this office is!

  40 To think how very glad

  Fabricius must have been to hear such news;

  he says: ‘My Rome you shall once more be lovely.’

  And if the heavens care for things down here,

  then all those citizen-souls who dwell up there

  whose bodies were abandoned here on earth,

  pray that you end this lengthy, civil hatred

  because of which the people are not safe

  and which has closed the pathway to their temples,

  so well attended once, and now in war

  50 have been transformed into a den of thieves,

  whose doors are closed only to men of good,

  and there among their altars and bare statues

  all kinds of cruel activity takes place –

  ah, how diverse those acts –

  nor do they start attacking without bells

  placed there on high to give thanks to our God.

  Women in tears and the defenseless throng

  of all the young and all the old and tired

  who hate themselves and their lives overlived

  60 and the black friars and the grey, the white,

  and all the other groups of sick and weary

  cry out: ‘O Lord of ours, help us, help us!’

  and all of these poor people in bewilderment,

  thousands and thousands show you all their wounds

  which would make even Hannibal feel pity.

  And if you take a good look at God’s house

  that’s all aflame today, by putting out a few

  sparks you could calm these wills

  that show that they are so enflamed today;

  70 whereby your good works will be praised in Heaven.

  The bears and wolves, the lions, eagles, and snakes

  to a great column that is made of marble

  give trouble, and they often harm themselves;r />
  because of them that noble lady weeps

  that called for you to uproot from herself

  all those bad plants that know not how to flower.

  More than a thousand years have now gone by

  since all those noble souls did pass away

  that made her what she was in their own day.

  80 Ah, you newcomers haughty beyond limits,

  irreverent to a mother great as she!

  Be husband, be her father!

  All help we wait to come from your own hand –

  the greater Father is fixed on other work.

  Rarely it happens that injurious Fortune

  is not in conflict with high undertakings

  for she does not agree with daring deeds.

  Now, having cleared the way by which you entered,

  she leads me to forgive all her misdeeds,

  90 for here, at least, she differs from herself;

  in all the time this world of ours remembers

  was the way not clear to mortal man as now

  it is to you, to reach eternal fame,

  for you can raise that monarchy most noble

  up on its feet, if I am not mistaken.

  What glory to hear said:

  ‘The others helped her in her youth and strength,

  but he saved her from death when she was old.’

  Upon Tarpeian Mount, my song, you’ll see

  100 a knight to whom all Italy pays honor,

  who thinks of others more than of himself.

  Tell him: ‘One who’s not seen you yet up close,

  but only as one falls in love through fame,

  says Rome keeps begging you

  with eyes all wet and dripping with its pain,

  from all her seven hills to show her mercy.’

  P70: Lasso me, ch’i’ non so in qual parte pieghi

  Oh what to do with all that hope of mine

  by now betrayed so many, many times!

  since no one offers me an ear of pity,

  why cast so many prayers into the air?

  But should it be that I not be denied

  an end to my poor words,

  before my end has come,

  I beg my lord it please him let me say

  again one day, free in the grass and flowers:

  10 ‘It’s right and just that I sing and be joyful.’

  There is good reason that I sing sometimes,

  since for so long a time I have been sighing

  that I could never start too soon to make

  my smiling equal to my many woes.

  If I could only make those holy eyes

  receive delight somehow

  from some sweet words of mine,

  how blessèd would I be above all lovers!

  But more so if in truth I were to say:

  20 ‘A lady begs me, so I wish to speak.’