My yearning thoughts, that step by step have led
my reasoning to heights unreachable,
you see my lady’s heart is hard as stone,
and on my own I cannot enter it.
She does not deign to look down low enough
to care about our words;
it is not Heaven’s will,
and I am weary now from opposition,
and since my heart is hard and bitter now,
30 ‘So in my speech I now wish to be harsh.’
What am I saying? Where am I? Who cheats
me more than I and my excessive wants?
My mind could run the heavens sphere to sphere
and find no star condemning me to tears;
if mortal veil it is that dulls my sight,
what fault is it of stars
or any lovely thing?
In me dwells one who night and day gives grief,
since she gave me the burden of the pleasure:
40 ‘Her sweet presence, her soft and lovely glance.’
All things adorning our world with their beauty
came forth in goodness from the Master’s hand,
but I, who cannot see so deep in her,
am dazzled by the beauty on the outside;
should I ever again see the true light,
my eyes will not resist,
so weak have they become
by their own fault and not by that day’s fault
when I turned them to her angelic beauty
50 ‘In the sweet season of my early age.’
P71: Perché la vita è breve
Because life is so short
and wit so fearful of so high a venture,
I have no confidence in either one;
I hope for understanding
there where I yearn it be, where it must be,
that pain of mine which I cry out in silence.
by nature lazy, but by great pleasure spurred;
and he who speaks of you
acquires from the subject gracious habit
10 which, with the wings of love
lifting him, part him from all thought that’s vile;
raised by such wings, I now shall say the things
my heart has carried hidden for so long.
Not that I do not see
how much my praise falls short of honoring you,
but I cannot resist the great desire
inside me since the time
that I saw what no thought can hope to equal,
let alone words, my own or any others.
20 Source of my sweet condition that is bitter
I know no one but you can understand:
when in your burning rays I turn to snow,
that kind disdain of yours
perhaps then my unworthiness offends.
Oh, if such fear as this
were not to temper flame that burns in me,
then, happy death! for I would in their presence
rather die happily than live without them.
That I am not destroyed,
30 so frail an object to so strong a fire,
is not because of my own worth that saves me;
but fear, that freezes blood
that runs through all my veins, strengthens the heart
a little so that it may burn for longer.
O hills, O vales, O streams, O woods, O fields,
O witnesses of this my heavy life,
how many times you’ve heard me call on Death!
Ah fate so dolorous,
staying destroys me, fleeing is no help!
40 But if a greater fear
did not stop me, a short and quicker way
would end this suffering, bitter and hard –
it is the fault of one who does not care.
Sorrow, why lead me off
the path to say what I would rather not?
Let me go where my pleasure urges me.
For I do not complain
about you, eyes serene beyond man’s reach,
nor about him who binds me in this knot.
50 Take a good look at all the colors Love
will often paint right there upon my face,
then you can guess what he does inside me,
where day and night he rules
me with the force that he’s gathered from you,
you holy lights and happy –
except that you cannot observe yourselves,
but every time you turn to look at me
you see in someone else what you are like.
Were you as well aware
60 of that beauty, divine, incredible
of which I speak, as is the one who sees it,
a measured happiness
your heart could not possess; perhaps, then, beauty
is separate from the natural face that moves you.
Happy the soul who sighs because of you,
celestial lights for which I thank my life
which for no other reason I find pleasant.
Ah, why do you so rarely
give me that which I never have enough of?
70 Why don’t you look more often
at the destruction Love is causing me?
Why do you strip me without hesitation
of all the good my soul feels now and then?
I must say that sometimes,
with thanks to you, I feel within my soul
a sweetness that’s unusual and new
which every other burden
of painful thoughts it then expels from there,
so of a thousand only one remains.
80 This bit of life and no more gives me pleasure;
and if this good of mine could last a while
no other life could ever equal it.
Perhaps it would make others
envious, and me proud from so much honor;
and so, alas, it’s fated
that laughter’s limits be assailed by tears,
and interrupting all those burning thoughts,
that I return to me, to think of me.
The amorous thought that dwells
90 inside of you reveals itself to me
and draws out of my heart all other joys;
whereby such words and deeds
come out of me that I hope to become
immortal through them though the flesh may die.
Before your presence, harm and anguish flee,
and when you leave the two of them return;
but since my memory, so much in love,
will not allow them entrance,
they get no further than the surface parts.
100 So if some lovely fruit
grows out of me, from you first comes the seed;
I see myself an arid piece of land
that’s tilled by you – the praise all goes to you.
Song, you instead of calming make me burn
to tell about what steals me from myself;
and so be sure that you are not alone.
P72: Gentil mia donna, i’ veggio
I see, my gracious lady,
when your eyes move, the sweetness of a glow
that lights the way for me that leads to Heaven;
and there, as is its custom,
within, where I sit all alone with Love,
your heart shines through – and I can almost see it.
This is the sight that leads me to do well
and shows me how to reach the goal of glory,
and this alone sets me apart from others.
10 There is no human tongue
that ever could explain what those divine
two lights can make me feel,
neither when winter scatters all the frost
nor later when the year grows young again
as it was at the time of my first yearning.
I think: if up above,
where the eternal Mover of the stars
deigned to di
splay this work of His on earth,
there be more works so lovely,
20 then let the prison I am locked in open
which keeps me from the way to such a life!
Then I return to my accustomed war,
grateful to Nature and my day of birth
which have reserved for me so great a good,
and her who, to such hope,
raised up my heart (for until then I lay
heavy and hard to bear
but from then on a pleasure to myself)
filling with high and gracious thought that heart
30 for which those lovely eyes possess the key.
Never such happiness
did Love or ever-changing Fortune give
to those who were their closest friends in life
that I would not exchange
for one glance of those eyes where all my rest
comes from, as every tree comes from its roots.
Angelic sparks of loveliness, the blessers
of all my life, wherein flares up the pleasure
sweetly consuming and destroying me:
40 as every other light
will flee and fade whenever yours shines forth,
just so from my own heart,
when so much sweetness pours down into it,
all else, all of my other thoughts depart
and left there all alone with you is Love.
All sweetness ever found
in hearts of lucky lovers and collected
all in one place, is nothing next to what
I feel when you, at times,
50 sweetly within the lovely black and white,
make move the light in which Love takes delight.
And I believe from swaddling clothes and crib
that for my imperfection and bad fortune
this remedy the heavens have provided.
Your veil does me a wrong
as does your hand that often comes between
my highest of all pleasures
and my own eyes, so night and day pours forth
my great desire to relieve my heart
60 which takes its shape from your own changing look.
Since I can see, with sorrow,
that all my natural gifts are not enough
to make me worthy of so dear a glance,
I force myself to be
what is becoming to so high a hope
and noble fire in which all of me burns.
If swift to good and slow to what is ill,
condemner of what all the world desires,
I could become through persevering toil,
70 perhaps such reputation
could help me in her kind consideration.
Surely, an end to tears
my grieving heart invokes from that place only
will come at last from fair eyes sweetly trembling,
ultimate hope of every noble lover.
Song, just behind you is one of your sisters,
and in the same place I can feel the other
getting ready, and so I rule more paper.
P73: Poi che per mio destino
Since it has been my fate
for my own burning wish to make me write
the wish that forced me to eternal sighing,
Love, you who makes me want this,
show me the way to go and be my guide
and keep my verse in tune with my desire,
but not so that my heart is out of tune
with sweetness overflowing, as I fear
from what I feel where no eye ever reaches;
10 for my words burn and urge me,
nor does my talent (whence I fear and tremble),
as oftentimes it happens,
diminish the great fire of my mind;
rather, I melt when I hear my own words,
as if I were a snowman in the sun
When I began I thought
to find some brief repose, some kind of truce
for my inflamed desire through my words;
this hope of mine made me
20 daring enough to speak of what I felt,
now in my need it leaves me and dissolves.
But still I must pursue this lofty venture,
continuing to write my loving notes,
so powerful the will that transports me;
and dead is Reason now
who held the reins and cannot fight against it.
At least let Love show me
what I must say so that if by some chance
it strike the ears of my sweet enemy
30 it may make her, not mine, but pity’s friend.
I say, if in that age
when souls burned so in search of the true honor,
the industry of some men took them round
and through the different countries
past hills and seas in search of honored things
and plucked from them their loveliest of flowers;
since it was wished by God and Love and Nature
to fill most perfectly with every virtue
those lovely lights by which I live in joy,
40 there is no need for me
to change countries or pass from shore to shore:
to them I always go
as to the source of all of my well-being –
and when I run desirous toward death,
with their sight only do I help my state.
Just as the helmsman tired
by furious winds will lift his head at night
to those two lights that our pole always holds,
so in the storm of love
50 which I endure, those shining eyes of hers
are my sole comfort and my constellation.
Alas, but much more do I steal from them
now here, now there, as Love suggests I do,
than what comes from them as a gracious gift;
the little worth I have
I have from them as my perpetual norm;
from the first time I saw them
I took no step toward good without them there,
so I have placed them at my very summit,
60 for my own worth alone is valueless.
Never could I imagine,
and no less tell about, all the effects
those gentle eyes produce within my heart;
all of the other pleasures
found in this life I hold to be far less,
and every other beauty falls behind.
A tranquil peace without a single worry
like that which reigns eternally in Heaven
moves from their smile that holds and makes one love.
70 Could I but see fixedly
how Love in all his sweetness governs them
up close, for just one day,
with none of the celestial spheres in motion,
nor think of anyone nor of myself,
without blinking my eyes too frequently!
Alas, I go in search
of what can never be in any way
and I live in desire beyond hope.
If only the tight knot
80 which Love ties round my tongue on the occasion
when too much light wins over human sight
were loosened, I would gather up the courage
right then and there to speak words so unusual
they would make anyone who hears them weep.
But those wounds deeply pressed
then force my wounded heart to turn away,
and from this I turn pale,
and my blood runs to hide, I know not where,
nor am I what I was; and I’m aware
90 this is the blow with which Love dealt me death.
Song, I can feel my pen already tired
from talking long and sweetly by its means,
but not of all my thoughts that speak to me.
ANTHONY MORTIMER (1936– )
Professor of English Literature
at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Mortimer has completed a translation for Penguin: Petrarch’s Canzoniere: Selected Poems (2002), from which these sixteen poems are taken.
P34: Apollo, s’ancor vive il bel desio
Apollo, should the fair desire still last
that burned you where Thessalian waters flow,
if golden tresses loved so long ago
be not forgotten with the ages past;
from biting weather and from sluggish frost
that stays as long as you conceal your brow,
protect the honoured and the sacred bough
where you were first ensnared and I am lost;
and by the power of love’s hope that then
10 sustained you in a hard and humble life,
dispel the noxious vapours that pervade;
so shall we both marvel to see again
our lady sit upon the grassy turf
and make with her own arms her own sweet shade.
P35: Solo e pensoso i píu deserti campi
Alone in thought, through the deserted fields
I wander with a slow and measured pace,
and eyes intent to flee from any trace
of human presence in the sand revealed.
For my defence I find no other shield
against the people’s open knowing gaze,
for in my hearing and my cheerless ways
one reads the flame that burns in me concealed;
so that I think the mountain and the slope,
10 the wood and stream already understand
the temper of my life, from others hid.
But yet I cannot find a path so steep,
a way so wild that Love does not ascend,
discoursing with me still, and I with him.
P181: Amor fra l’erbe una leggiadra rete
Upon the grass Love spread a wanton net,
woven with gold and pearls, under a bough
of the dear evergreen I love, although
it holds more grief than gladness in its shade.
The seed he sows and gathers was the bait,
bitter and sweet, my fear and craving now;
never were notes so gentle and so low
since the first day when Adam raised his head.
And the clear light, forcing the sun to hide,
10 flashed all about, and in a hand more white
than ivory or snow was wound the rope.
So in the net I fell; here was I caught
by the fair motions and angelic words,
the pleasure, the desire, and the hope.
P192: Stiamo, Amor, a veder la gloria nostra
Love, let us stay, our glory to behold,
things passing nature, wonderful and rare:
see how much sweetness rains upon her there,
see the pure light of heaven on earth revealed,
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