Petrarch in English

by Thomas Roche (ed)

  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,