The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  “Beloved, lovely, young and full of charm:

  that’s what we were at first; we’ve come to this:

  that this one beats her wings

  and wants to fly to her old hiding place;

  “but on my own I’m just a shade. And now

  I’ve told you everything that you can grasp.”

  She moved away then, saying,

  “Don’t worry; I’m not leaving you just yet,”

  and gathered up a garland of green laurel

  and with her own hands made

  a wreath of leaves and put it round my temples.

  Song, to whoever calls your speech obscure,

  answer: “I do not care, because I hope

  another messenger

  will soon announce the truth in clearer voice;

  I came ahead to wake men up, if he

  who sent me on this errand

  did not mislead me when he launched me forth.”

  120

  Those verses full of pity where I saw

  your ingenuity and deep affection

  displayed such strength that I was quickly moved

  to take my pen and make a swift response,

  assuring you that I’m among the living,

  have not yet felt her final bite whom I

  and all the world await, though there’s no doubt

  that I was at her threshold, without fear;

  then I returned—I’d seen, written above it,

  the information that my term of life

  (although I couldn’t read the day or hour)

  had not yet finished its determined course.

  I want you thus to calm your troubled heart

  and seek some other man more worth this honor.

  121

  Now look at this, Love: how a youthful woman

  scorns your supremacy, cares naught for my illness,

  and feels secure between two enemies.

  You are in armor, she has just a gown,

  loose-haired and barefoot in the grass and flowers,

  ruthless toward me, and arrogant toward you.

  I am a prisoner, but if pity has preserved

  your bow for you, and one or two sharp arrows,

  for both yourself and me, my lord, revenge!

  122

  For seventeen long years the heavens have rolled

  since I at first caught fire, still not quenched;

  but when I start to contemplate my plight

  I feel a chill within these flames of mine.

  The proverb’s true: your hair is going to change

  before you’ll change your habits; senses wane,

  but human passions keep their strength and force:

  the bitter shadow of the heavy veil.

  Oh me! Alas! And when will that day come

  when I can gaze back at my misspent years

  and step out of the fire, the long sorrow?

  Or will I ever even see the day

  when that sweet face’s air, those eyes,

  will please me much, but only as they ought to?

  123

  Her lovely paleness made a cloud of love

  that covered her sweet smile—so majestic

  it stirred my heart and brought him out to meet it

  right in the middle of my rapturous face.

  I learned then how they apprehend in Paradise,

  as mercy showed quite clearly in her thought

  while I alone was able to perceive it

  because I gaze at nothing else on earth.

  Each look angelic, every humble gesture

  that ever came forth from a loving lady

  would seem like scorn compared to what I speak of.

  Her lovely gaze was fixed upon the earth,

  and as her silence spoke it seemed to say:

  “Who separates me from my faithful friend?”

  124

  Love, Fortune, and my mind—which now avoids

  all that it sees and turns back to the past—

  afflict me so that sometimes I must feel

  envy for those who’ve reached the other shore.

  Sir Love torments my heart, and Fortune

  takes from it all its comforts, while my mind

  weeps foolishly and pines; as a result,

  I live at war, contending with my sorrow.

  I do not hope that sweet days will return;

  instead I think they’ll go from bad to worse,

  the midpoint of my course is now well past.

  I see all hope, alas, crash through my hands;

  it isn’t made of diamond, merely glass,

  and all my thoughts, I see, must break in two.

  125

  If the thoughts that hurt me,

  since they’re so sharp and pungent,

  could dress themselves for once in their true colors,

  the one who burns me up

  and flees might share the pain,

  and wake Love up from where he’s sleeping now;

  my weary footsteps wouldn’t

  be so lonely then,

  across the hills and fields;

  my eyes would be less wet

  if she burned too, who stands there now like ice

  and leaves me not a jot

  that isn’t flame or fire.

  Because Love fights and bests me

  and strips away my skill,

  I speak in acrid rhymes that lack all sweetness;

  but branches do not always

  reveal in leaf or flower,

  or in rough bark, their native strength and vigor.

  Let Love, who sits in shade,

  and let her eyes as well,

  see what my heart conceals;

  if sorrow overflows

  and happens to bring tears and lamentations,

  that must pain me, and others,

  because I can’t be smooth.

  Sweet and delightful rhymes

  that I resorted to

  upon Love’s first assault, I with no weapons:

  will no one come to shatter

  the stone around my heart

  so I can pour my feelings forth again?

  Because it seems to me

  there’s someone in my heart

  who always wants to paint

  and speak about my lady;

  I can’t describe her by myself; I come

  undone, I fall apart,

  my comfort runs away.

  Like a child held down,

  and with his tongue tied up,

  who cannot speak and yet feels he must talk,

  desire drives me on

  and I must speak, in hope

  my enemy will hear before I die.

  If she gets all her pleasure

  from her own face alone

  and shuts all others out,

  then maybe you, green shore,

  will listen to my sighs and send them on

  so it will be recalled

  that you were good to me.

  You know quite well no foot

  has ever touched the earth

  that matches hers in beauty when she trod you;

  therefore my tired heart

  and my tormented body

  return to share their cares with you again.

  I wish you had concealed

  some lovely footprints still

  among the flowers and grass,

  so that my bitter life

  might come in tears and find a place to rest!

  My doubtful wayward soul

  finds comfort as it can.

  Each place I chance to look

  I find a sweet repose

  and think: “Her eyes’ bright light shone on this spot.”

  Each grass or flower I pick

  persuades me it was rooted

  in earth on which she took her usual walk

  along the river meadows,

  fresh, flowering, and green,

  and sometimes stopped to re
st.

  So nothing’s really lost,

  and knowing more would likely spoil things.

  Oh, blessèd spirit, what

  can you pass on to me?

  Poor little song, you turned out pretty rough!

  I think you sense your worth:

  stay right here in these woods.

  126

  Clear waters, fresh and sweet,

  where she who is my lady,

  my only one, would rest her lovely body;

  gentle branch that pleased her

  (with sighing, I remember)

  to make a column she could lean against;

  grass and flowers which her gown,

  graceful and rich, concealed,

  and her angelic breast,

  sacred, brilliant air

  where Love had those fair eyes unlock my heart:

  listen all together

  to these my mournful words and dying speech.

  If it’s my destiny

  and Heaven deems it so

  that Love will shut these weeping eyes of mine,

  let kindness act to see

  my body buried here

  and let my soul go naked to its home;

  my death will be less harsh

  if I can keep my hope

  until that fearful pass,

  because my weary spirit

  could never sail to a more restful port,

  or in more tranquil grave

  flee from my poor, exhausted flesh and bones.

  The time will come, perhaps,

  when she’ll come back again

  to her old haunts, that wild gentle thing,

  and she will seek me out

  as on that blessèd day

  and turn her loving and expectant gaze

  to search me out—oh, pity!—

  and see that I am dust

  among the stones. Then Love

  will make her sigh so sweetly

  that she will win me grace at last in Heaven

  and force my fate to change,

  wiping her eyes upon her lovely veil.

  From lovely branches fell

  (how sweet to recollect this)

  a rain of flowers on her precious bosom,

  and she sat humbly there

  in such a cloud of glory,

  a loving nimbus that surrounded her;

  some flowers on her skirt

  and some in her blond hair—

  like pearls set on gold

  they seemed to me that day;

  while one was landing gently on the earth,

  another twirled around,

  as if to say, “Now here is where Love reigns.”

  How often I would murmur

  at that time, full of awe:

  “This person clearly had her birth in Paradise!”

  Her bearing, clearly godlike,

  her face and words and smile,

  so filled me with forgetfulness,

  and so divided me

  from images of truth,

  that I would utter, sighing,

  “How did I get here? When?”

  believing that I must have gone to Heaven.

  That’s why this grass delights me;

  there is no other place where I find peace.

  If you had beauties equal to desires,

  you could go boldly

  out of this wood and move among mankind.

  127

  In that direction where I’m spurred by Love,

  I must conduct these aching, painful rhymes,

  which take their cue from my afflicted mind.

  Which one goes first and which shall be the last?

  He who converses with me on my woes

  leaves me uncertain by confused dictation.

  I find my painful story is inscribed

  down in my heart, written in his own hand,

  and I go back to read it there; however,

  I’ll speak it out as well,

  because my sighing brings relief, and talking helps.

  I say: Although I look

  at many different things, gazing intently,

  I only see one lady, her fair face.

  Because my cruel misfortune banished me

  far from my greatest good, to show me

  how proud, disturbing, and implacable it is,

  memory’s all that Love will let me live on:

  thus when I see a world of youthful aspect,

  starting again to clothe itself in green,

  to that same season I can call a girl

  whose beauty’s now transformed her to a lady;

  when once the sun has mounted to its zenith,

  it warms the world below,

  it’s like the flame of love deep in the heart;

  but while the shorter day

  laments the sun’s retreat, a stepping backward,

  I see her coming to her perfect days.

  When I see leaves upon a branch, or gaze

  at violets, growing on the earth in spring,

  when cold grows less and better stars grow potent,

  I still see green and violet in my eyes,

  the colors Love was armed with when he came

  to start the war he still pursues today,

  and that sweet tender bark that covered then

  those youthful limbs and now, today, encloses

  the noble soul who dwells there and whose beauty

  makes other pleasures seem

  just vile: I recollect so strongly

  her humble bearing then

  which had begun to flower, sooner than her years,

  and still remains the source and balm of woe.

  Sometimes I look at freshly fallen snow

  on distant hills, all brilliant in the sunlight,

  and think of how Love’s sun can melt my snow,

  considering that face that’s more than human,

  which has the power to wet my eyes far off

  and up close dazzles them and kills my heart;

  between that white and gold are colors that

  come always, yet I think no mortal eye

  but mine has glimpsed or understood their hue;

  as for the hot desire

  that flames within me when she sighs or smiles,

  everything disappears

  and my forgetfulness becomes eternal:

  summer can’t change it, winter keeps it here.

  And after rain at night I never see

  the wheeling stars pass through the clearing air,

  showing their lights between the dew and frost,

  without considering her lovely eyes,

  the one support on which my wan life leans,

  the way I saw them once behind a veil;

  and as the sky displayed their beauty then

  I see them still, they glitter with her tears

  and that same brilliance makes me burn forever.

  Chancing to see the dawn,

  I sense the advent of the light that holds me;

  watching the evening sunset,

  I seem to watch her as she takes her leave

  and plunges all the world in utter darkness.

  If ever I saw white and crimson roses

  gathered by virgin hands and then arranged

  fresh in a golden vase, I thought at once

  that I was looking at the face of her

  who easily excels all other wonders

  by virtue of three excellences gathered:

  blond tresses loose about her neck and throat

  where any milk will suffer by comparison,

  and then her cheeks, which glow with a sweet fire.

  And if I see the wind

  stirring the white and yellow meadow flowers

  I think about the place

  where that first day I saw that golden hair

  disheveled in the wind as I caught fire.

  Maybe I thought that I could count the stars

  and catch the oc
ean in a little glass

  when I conceived this most peculiar notion

  of saying in a page or two how many

  places this woman, flower of all beauty,

  has shed her dazzling light upon the world,

  because I never want to part from her;

  nor shall I leave her—if I tried to flee

  she’d block my way to Heaven or on earth;

  she’s always present to

  my weary eyes, her image quite consumes me,

  and thus she stays with me,

  I’ll never see another, nor desire to,

  nor could my sighs form any other’s name.

  Song, you know very well that what I say

  is nothing when compared to all the thoughts

  I have to carry with me night and day;

  and yet the love I bear

  has helped me to survive this endless war;

  I’d have been dead by now

  bewailing all the sorrows of my heart,

  except that thoughts of her have kept me living.

  128

  Italy, my Italy, though speech cannot

  cure all the mortal wounds

  that seem to me to fill your lovely body,

  maybe my sighs at least can hope to aid

  the Tiber and the Arno,

  the Po as well, where I sit grieving now.

  Ruler of Heaven, I pray

  the mercy that first brought You here to earth

  may turn now to Your loved and sacred country.

  You see, my noble Lord,

  what petty causes can bring savage wars;

  these hearts that fierce, proud Mars

  makes closed and hardened now,

  open them, Father, soften and free them;

  and let Your truth be heard

  through me, although my tongue is hardly worthy.

  All you whose hands, by Fortune’s means, now hold

  the reins of power for

  these lovely regions, for which no pity moves you,

  what are these foreign swords doing among us?

  And why should our green plains

  be colored red by this barbaric blood?

  A foolish error blinds you:

  you see so little, thinking you see much,

  looking for love and trust in venal hearts;

  who has the most retainers

  is most surrounded by his enemies!

  Oh, deluge gathered up

  in what strange wilderness

  to come and flood our sweet and verdant fields!

  And if by our own hands

  we bring this on, who do we think will save us?

  Nature provided well for our protection

  when she put up the shield

  of Alps between us and the raging Germans;

  but blind desire, set against itself,

  has found a clever way

  to make this healthy body sick again.

  Now inside the same cage,

  the savage beasts are mingled with the flocks

  which means the gentler, better ones will groan;

  and all this comes about

  from the descendants (sharpening our grief)