The Poetry of Petrarch
Page 22
Oh, gentle miracle, oh, happy soul,
oh, beauty high and rare, without a copy,
that soon went back to where it first existed!
She has a crown and palm there, for her deeds,
who made both bright and famous in the world
her lofty virtue and my crazy passion.
296
Once I accused myself, now I excuse,
in fact I rate myself quite highly now,
thanks to the worthy prison, the sweet blow
that I have kept concealed these many years.
Envious Fates, how soon you broke the spindle
that spun the soft, bright thread around my bonds,
and broke the golden arrow by which death
grew more attractive than it usually is!
For there was never any soul in love
with gaiety and liberty and life,
that would not change its natural tendency
and choose to groan for her instead of sing
for someone else, happy to have such wounds,
prepared to die for her or live in bondage.
297
Two great opponents were united once:
Beauty and Chastity lived in such accord
her holy soul experienced no conflict
when they moved in to sojourn with her there.
Now Death has left them separate and scattered:
one lives in Heaven, adding to its glory,
one’s in the earth, which covers up those eyes
that used to shoot their amorous darts at me.
The gracious acts, the wise and humble speech,
that came from someplace lofty, the sweet gaze
that used to wound my heart (which shows it still)
have vanished, all, and since I’m slow to follow,
perhaps I’ll have a chance to consecrate
her precious name with this exhausted pen.
298
When I turn round to scan those recent years
that fled away, and scattered all my thoughts,
and quenched the fire in which I froze and burned,
and ended my repose from heavy labors,
and broke the faith of amorous deceits,
and put my wealth in just two far-fetched places,
the one in Heaven, the other in the earth,
and lost the profits from my painful gains,
I rouse myself and find myself so naked
that all misfortunes seem to be attractive
compared to what I feel by way of sorrow.
Oh star of mine, oh Fortune, Fate, oh Death,
oh Day forever sweet and cruel to me,
see how you’ve brought me to this low estate!
299
Where is that brow that with the smallest sign
could jerk my heart around, this way and that?
Where are the lashes and the two fair stars
that shed the light that helped me find my way?
Where is the worth, the knowledge, and the wisdom?
The skillful, virtuous, sweet, and humble speech?
Where are the beauties gathered in her person
that ruled my will so long on her behalf?
Where is the noble shadow of that face
that gave refreshment to my tired soul,
the place where all my thoughts were written down?
Where is the one who held my life in hand?
How much this brokenhearted world has lost!
Just like my eyes, which never will be dry.
300
How much I envy you, you greedy earth,
who get to clasp the one who’s taken from me,
and keep me from the air of her sweet face
in which I once found peace from all my war!
How much I envy Heaven, locking in
that which it greedily gathered to itself,
the spirit freed from her most lovely limbs,
that rarely will unlock itself for others!
How much I envy souls whose fortune now
is having her sweet, holy company,
the very thing I sought with so much passion!
How much I envy hard and pitiless Death,
who having quenched the life I had through her,
dwells in her eyes but will not summon me!
301
Oh, valley echoing with my laments,
and river, often swelling from my tears,
beasts of the woods, wandering birds, and fish
that live between these verdant riverbanks,
air warmed and clearing from my constant sighs,
sweet path that has become so bitter to me,
hill that I loved and now have come to hate
where Love still leads me, as he used to do:
I recognize you in your well-known forms,
but not, alas, myself, since I’ve become
one who was glad and now is plunged in grief.
I used to see my love, and I’ve returned
to see the place where, naked, she passed on
to Heaven as she shed her lovely vesture.
302
My thought transported me to where she was,
she whom I seek and do not find on earth;
I saw her there, in the third sphere’s bright circle;
she was more beautiful, and seemed less proud.
She took me by the hand: “You’ll be with me,
in this same sphere, if my desire is true;
I am the one who gave you so much war
and had my day cut off before the evening.
“No human mind can comprehend my bliss;
I wait for just two things: you, and that veil
I left behind on earth and you loved so.”
Ah, why did she grow silent, drop my hand?
For at the sound of words so kind and chaste
I could have stayed forever with her there.
303
You, Love, who stayed with me in happy times
along these banks so friendly to our thoughts,
you used to walk and talk with me, discoursing,
along the river, settling old accounts:
and you, you flowers, grasses, leaves, and shadows,
you caves and waves, soft breezes, hills, and valleys
that harbored all my amorous travails
and all my frequent and too violent storms:
oh, wandering denizens of these green woods,
oh, nymphs, and you who feed and shelter there
within the grassy depths of liquid crystal:
my days were bright and have become as dark
as Death, who makes them so! In this world, then,
our destiny’s determined when we’re born.
304
Then when my heart was eaten by love’s worms
and burning steadily in amorous flames,
I combed the solitary, wild hills
for footprints of a wandering wild creature,
and I dared, singing, to complain of Love
and of the one who was so cruel to me;
but wit and rhyme were fitful at that age
because my thoughts were new and faltering.
The fire is dead; a little marble now
stands over it. But had it grown, with time,
into old age, as it has done with others,
armed with the rhymes that I no longer have,
and with a style of speaking that matured,
I could split stones and make them weep with sweetness.
305
Beautiful soul, freed from the knot that was
the loveliest thing that Nature ever knit:
from Heaven turn your thought to my dark life,
which had glad thoughts but now is turned to tears.
Your heart is free now from the false opinion
that sometimes made your sweet face harsh and cruel;
since you’re released from cares
, please turn your gaze
in my direction, listening to my sighs.
Look down at the great rock that births the Sorgue
and you’ll see one among the grass and waters
who’s nourished by your memory and by sorrow;
he wants you to abandon your old dwelling,
where love was born between us, so you won’t
have to see what displeased you in your people.
306
The sun that showed me how to get to Heaven,
the glorious steps unto the highest Sun,
has shut my light and her terrestrial prison
away from me, in some indifferent stones,
and I’ve become a creature of the forest
who wanders far, on tired, lonely feet,
bearing a heavy heart, eyes wet and downcast,
around a world that’s like a mountain desert.
Thus I go searching places where I saw her;
Love, you’re my only company; you come
to try to show me where I need to go;
and I don’t find her, but I see her footprints,
her sacred steps along the road to Heaven,
far from Avernian and Stygian lakes.
307
I thought I had the skill to soar in flight
(not my own power, but his who spreads my wings)
and sing a song that’s worthy of that knot
with which Love binds me and which Death will loosen.
I found myself too slow and just as frail
as some thin branch that bears a heavy burden;
I said: “He flies to fall who mounts too high,
nor can a man perform what heavens deny him.”
No clever feather ever flew so high
(let alone one with heavy tongue or style)
as Nature did when she made my sweet hindrance;
Love followed suit, and took such special care
adorning her that I was quite unworthy
even to see her; that was just good luck.
308
The one for whom I traded Sorgue for Arno
and honest poverty for slavish riches
turned holy sweetness into bitterness
and left me scrawny, dying of starvation.
Since then I’ve often tried in vain to capture
her lofty beauty, for succeeding ages,
that they may cherish her and love her too,
but style can’t incarnate that face of hers.
Still, now and then, I dare to shadow forth
some of the praises that were always hers,
as many as are stars across the sky;
but when I reach the fact of her divineness,
a bright, brief sun that shone upon this world,
my wit and art and daring all collapse.
309
The high, new miracle that in our time
came to the world but did not wish to stay,
whom Heaven merely showed us, then took back
in order to adorn its starry cloisters:
Lord Love, who first set free my tongue, wants me
to show her to whoever didn’t see her,
and to that end a thousand times he’s worked
my wits, my time, my papers, pens, and inks.
But poetry has not attained its peak,
I know that well, and so does anyone
who’s ever tried to write or speak of Love;
let thoughtful people love the silent truth
that passes anything in language, sighing:
“Blessed be the eyes that saw her while she lived!”
310
Now Zephyrus returns, bringing fine weather
and his sweet family of grass and flowers,
chattering Procne, weeping Philomena,
and Spring, decked out in white and in vermilion;
the meadows laugh, the sky grows clear again,
great Jove delights in looking at his daughter,
the earth and air and water fill with love,
and every animal obeys love’s call.
To me, alas, the sighs that come are heavy;
she draws them upward from my deepest heart
she who has carried off its keys, to Heaven,
and all the birdsong, all the flowering meadows,
the soft and gentle gestures of fair ladies,
are like a wilderness of savage beasts.
311
That nightingale who weeps so tenderly,
lamenting for his children or his mate,
fills all the sky and fields with dulcet sweetness
in many notes and trills, grieving and skillful,
and through the night he keeps me company
and helps me to recall my bitter fate;
for I have no one but myself to blame
for not believing Death could rule a goddess.
How easy to deceive one who’s too sanguine!
That pair of lights was brighter than the sun;
who ever thought to see them dark on earth?
I start to understand what my harsh fate
is trying to teach me, as I live in tears:
nothing on earth that pleases can endure.
312
Not lovely stars that wander through clear skies,
nor well-caulked ships traversing tranquil seas,
nor armored knights crossing the countryside,
nor quick and happy creatures in the woods,
nor timely news of an awaited joy,
nor poems of love in high and courtly style,
nor, by clear fountains and lush meadowlands,
fair ladies singing sweetly, full of virtue,
nor any other thing can touch my heart:
she who is buried with it, she alone,
was all the light and mirror of my eyes.
Living is pain, so heavy and so long,
that I call for my end and long to see her,
the one I never should have seen at all.
313
The time is gone, alas, when I could live
refreshed amid the fire; the one I wept for
passed away, the one I wrote about,
but left me with my pen and all these tears.
Her face is gone, so sanctified and charming,
and as it went, her eyes speared through my heart,
that heart, once mine, which left to follow her,
as if enveloped in her lovely mantle.
She took it with her down into the grave
and then to Heaven, where she triumphs now,
adorned with laurel for her chastity.
And would that I were with them there, alas,
freed from the mortal veil that chains me here,
beyond these sighs, amid those blessèd souls!
314
Mind, you foresaw your pains and injuries,
pensive and sad even when times were good,
seeking intently, in her lovely sight,
some consolation for impending troubles:
her gestures and her words, her garments, face,
the pity newly mixing with her woe,
had you but understood, you might have said:
“This is the final day of years of sweetness.”
Such sweetness, then, oh, miserable soul,
the way we burned together in the moment,
seeing those eyes I would not see again,
and leaving in their keeping, as I would
with friends I trust completely, my best treasure:
my loving thoughts and my most loving heart.
315
My flowering green age was passing by,
the bonfire in my heart was cooling down,
and I was coming to that place in life
where one has turned to face the downward slope;
and bit by bit my precious enemy
was starting to gain confidence, lose fears,
and her sweet hon
esty was starting to
convert my bitter pains into new joys;
the time was coming near when Love could be
good friends with Chastity, and lovers might
sit down together and talk naturally.
Then Death felt envy at my happy state,
or else my hope, and Death attacked it there
and fell upon it in the middle way.
316
It was the time to find a peace or truce
from so much war, and that was maybe happening,
except that those glad steps were stopped by one
who evens out all inequalities;
for as a cloud dissolves itself in wind,
her life was gone, too quickly, and I lost
her two enchanting eyes to guide my way,
which now I have to follow with my thoughts.
She might have waited, since my hair, gone gray,
and years, gone past, were all transforming me,
and she need have no fear of what I’d say;
I would have talked to her, with virtuous sighs,
about my lengthy labors; now, from Heaven,
she sees, I’m sure, and she regrets them too.
317
Love helped me sail into a tranquil harbor
after the long, tumultuous times of storm,
into the years of chaste maturity
that rids itself of vice and takes on virtue;
my heart and my great loyalty were clear
and not displeasing to her lovely eyes.
Oh, vicious Death, how quick you are to spoil
the fruit of years in something like an hour!
If she had lived, we were approaching this:
I could have spoken and in those chaste ears
set down my ancient burden of sweet thoughts,
and she’d have answered me, perhaps, in kind,
sighing a little, using holy words,
our hair and faces showing how we’d changed.
318
That time a tree had fallen, seemingly
uprooted by an ax or by the wind,
its noble foliage scattered on the earth,
its wretched roots exposed and pale in sunlight,
I saw another tree, Love’s object in me,
the subject of Euterpe and Calliope;
it twined and grew around my heart as ivy
will make its home along a trunk or wall.
That living laurel where my best high thoughts
had made their nest, and where my burning sighs
had never managed to disturb the branches,
transferred to Heaven, though it left its roots
in that first faithful dwelling; from that place
someone calls mournfully and hears no answer.
319
Swifter than any deer my days have fled
like shadows, and what good I’ve seen has been
less than an eye blink, just a few clear hours
kept sweet and bitter in my memory.