The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  Caesar and Jove were never so much moved

  Casting your eyes upon my strange new pallor

  Charlemagne’s inheritor, who wears

  Clear waters, fresh and sweet

  Could I portray the gentle breeze of sighs

  Cruel star (if heavens have indeed the power

  Death has no way to make her sweet face bitter

  Death has put out the sun that dazzled me;

  Death, you have left this poor world cold and dark

  Desire spurs me on, Love guides and escorts

  Diana’s form did not delight her lover

  Each day seems longer than a thousand years

  Father of Heaven, after days now lost

  Flame of my soul, lovely beyond all beauty

  For any animal who dwells on earth

  For seventeen long years the heavens have rolled

  Fountain of sorrow, dwelling place of anger

  From ice that’s clear, alive, and smooth and shining

  From the most lovely eyes, the brightest face

  From thought to thought, from peak to mountain peak

  From time to time it seems her form and smile

  From wicked Babylon, that’s lost all shame

  Full of one longing thought that sends me far

  Full of that sweet ineffable delight

  “Gaze on that hill, my tired, yearning heart:

  Gentle, my lady, I can see

  Geri, when my sweet enemy gets angry

  Give me my peace, oh, all you cruel thoughts!

  Glorious Column, raising up our hope

  Go, doleful rhymes, and visit the hard stone

  Go forth, hot sighs, and reach to her cold heart

  “Go on and weep, my eyes: accompany

  Gorging and sleep and lounging on pillows

  Graces that bounteous Heaven grants to few

  Green garments, blood red, black, or purple

  Hannibal won but later did not know

  “Happy and pensive, in company, alone

  Here where I half exist, my dear Sennuccio

  Her golden hair was loosened to the breeze

  Her lovely paleness made a cloud of love

  He who decides to entrust his life

  He who showed endless providence and art

  However many lovely, graceful ladies

  How many times, in flight and seeking refuge

  How many times Love has instructed me:

  How many times, using my faithful guides

  How much I envy you, you greedy earth

  How this world goes! For what upset me once

  I am so weary from my ancient bundle

  I can’t be silent, yet I fear my tongue

  I’d like to take revenge on her, whose gaze

  I do not tire, Lady, of my love

  I don’t see anymore how to escape;

  I’d sing of Love in such a novel fashion

  I fear their fierce attack, those lovely eyes

  I feed my mind upon a food so noble

  I feel the ancient aura, and I see

  If fair desire’s still alive, Apollo

  If faithfulness in love, a heart sincere

  If fire never puts a fire out

  If Homer and then Virgil had but seen

  If I could get my thoughts down in these verses

  If I could hope by death to free myself

  If I do not deceive myself too much

  If I’d remained within that selfsame cave

  If I had known that sighs turned into rhyme

  If I hear birds lamenting, or green leaves

  I find no peace, and yet I am not warlike;

  If I said that, then may the one whose love

  If it’s not love, what is it then I feel?

  I fled the prison in which Love had held me

  If Love and Death don’t manage to cut short

  If Love does not come up with some new counsel

  I fly so often on the wings of thought

  If my life can withstand this bitter torment

  If that much-honored branch that shelters us

  If that sweet glance of hers can murder me

  If the rock mainly shuts this valley

  If the thoughts that hurt me

  If virtuous love is worthy, still, of mercy

  If you got free by any strange behavior—

  I go around in tears about my past

  I knew (since Heaven cleared my eyes so much

  I know quite well that natural advice

  I listen still, and still I hear no news

  I lived quite well contented with my fate

  I’ll always hate the window from which Love

  I make my plaint before the queen who rules

  I’m never going to look with tranquil mind

  I’m so defeated by this endless wait

  I’m weary now of thinking how my thoughts

  In doubt about my state I weep, I sing

  I never saw the sun come up so fair

  I never wish to sing the way I used to

  In just a single day I have been shown

  In noble blood a quiet, humble life

  Inside my heart I felt my spirits dying

  In that direction where I’m spurred by Love

  In the age of her lovely flowering

  In the sweet season of my early youth

  I sang and now I weep; and from my weeping

  I saw a maiden underneath a laurel

  I saw, among a thousand ladies, one

  I saw on earth angelic attributes

  I seem to hear, each hour, in my ear

  Italy, my Italy, though speech cannot

  I thought by now perhaps that I could live

  I thought I had the skill to soar in flight

  It is so weak, the thread by which it hangs

  It was the day the sun himself grew pale

  It was the time to find a peace or truce

  I used to leave the fountain of my life

  I’ve always loved, I go on loving still

  I’ve always sought a solitary life—

  I’ve begged Love before, and beg him again

  I’ve filled the whole surrounding air with sighs

  I’ve never been where I could see more clearly

  I’ve never seen you put aside your veil

  I’ve now passed through my sixteenth year of sighs

  I walk in thought, and in my thoughts I am

  I wanted once to shape such just laments

  I wept and now I sing, because that sun

  Just as eternal life means seeing God

  Lady, now living in our Maker’s presence

  Latona’s son had looked nine times already

  Life-giving sun, you loved that branch at first

  —“Life is most precious, so it seems to me

  Life runs on by and does not pause an hour

  Love, Fortune, and my mind—which now avoids

  Love fires up my heart with ardent zeal

  Love helped me sail into a tranquil harbor

  Love, I do wrong and see that I do wrong

  Love, let us pause to contemplate our glory

  Love opened my left side with his right hand

  Love sends me that sweet thought, the one which is

  Love sets me up, a target for his arrows

  Love spreads out in the grass a graceful net

  Love spurs me on and reins me in at once

  Love’s put me in the grasp of fair, cruel arms

  Love that lives and reigns in all my thoughts

  Love took me in with all his promises

  Love used to cry, and I would cry with him

  Love, you who can see clearly all my thoughts

  Lucky, happy flowers, and well-born grass

  Maybe Love makes her drop her lovely eyes

  May fire from Heaven rain down on your tresses

  Mind, you foresaw your pains and injuries

  More fortunate than any ot
her earth

  My enemy, in whom you watch your eyes

  My eyes, intense and heavy with desire

  My eyes, our sun’s gone dark; or rather say

  My face and hair are changing, day by day

  My faithful mirror tells me very often

  My flowering green age was passing by

  My fortune kindly and my life so joyful

  My fourteenth year of sighs: if its beginning

  My galley, loaded with forgetfulness

  My good luck is both late and very sluggish;

  My ills oppress me; I’m terrified by worse

  My lady used to visit me in sleep

  My luck, along with Love, had blessed me so

  My mad desire has gone so far astray

  My sacred aura breathes so often, in

  My soft and gentle comforter arrives

  My sweet and dear and greatly cherished pledge

  My thoughts would once chat softly to themselves

  My thought transported me to where she was

  My weary eyes, when I direct you toward

  Nature, and Love, and that sweet, humble soul

  Never did tender mother her dear son

  New song and weeping by the birds at daybreak

  Noble spirit, you who rule those limbs

  No matter where I turn my weary eyes

  No ship that ever landed, weather-racked

  No sparrow on a roof was as alone

  Not from the Spanish river Ebro to

  No tired helmsman ever fled to port

  Not just that single naked hand

  Not lovely stars that wander through clear skies

  Not Tesin, Po, Varo, Arno, Adige, Tiber

  Now look at this, Love: how a youthful woman

  Now that the heavens, earth, and winds are silent

  Now when I listen to you speak, so sweetly

  Now you have done the worst you can accomplish

  Now Zephyrus returns, bringing fine weather

  Oh, blessed and lovely soul, which Heaven waits for

  Oh day, oh hour, oh, the final moment

  Oh, Death, you have stained the loveliest face

  Oh, Envy, you old enemy of virtue

  Oh, fresh and shady, flowering green hill

  Oh, glances sweet and little words of wisdom

  Oh, happy spirit that so sweetly governed

  Oh, little room that used to be a haven

  Oh, lovely hand that grasps my heart, enclosing

  Oh, noble spirit warm with burning virtue

  Oh, put me where the sun kills flowers and grass

  Oh, scattered steps, oh, ardent, craving thoughts

  Oh, time, oh, fickle heavens, wheeling past

  Oh, valley echoing with my laments

  Oh, woe, Love takes me where I do not wish

  Oh, wretched vision, horrid likelihood!

  Once I accused myself, now I excuse

  One day as I stood gazing from my window

  Out of what mine did Love extract the gold

  Po, you can bear my outer shell along

  Pursued by Love to my accustomed place

  Rapacious Babylon has stuffed her sack

  Right through the midst of savage, hostile woods

  Sennuccio, just see how I am treated here

  She comes to mind (or rather say that she

  She sojourned in my heart, alive and fair

  Should any lady look for lasting fame

  Since it’s my destiny

  Since Mercy’s road is closed to me, I’ve come

  Since what I hope for is so long in coming

  Since you and I have proved so frequently

  Some animals there are with eyes so strong

  Something that, both in color and in fragrance

  Sometime near dawn there rises a sweet aura

  Sometimes, ashamed that I have not been rhyming

  Some will assume that in my praise of her

  Sorrow and love propelled this tongue of mine

  Sun bathes his golden chariot in the sea

  Sweet angers, sweet disdains, sweet peace accords

  Swifter than any deer my days have fled

  Swift river, coming from your Alpine source

  That always cruel and yet honored day

  That burning knot which, hour after hour

  That dreadful lord whom we can’t flee or hide from

  That fire which I thought had spent itself

  That light that blinds, even when far away

  That nightingale who weeps so tenderly

  That time a tree had fallen, seemingly

  That window where one sun is visible

  That yearning, sweet, dear, virtuous gaze of hers

  The aura and the fragrance and the coolness

  The breeze that softly sighs and moves among

  The burdened air and unrelenting cloud

  The chosen angels and the blessed souls

  The closer that I come to the last day

  The column’s broken, the green laurel’s down

  The day, the month, the year, oh, bless them all

  The golden feathers that surround her white

  The gold, the pearls, the flowers red and white

  The gracious lady whom you loved so much

  The heavenly breeze that sighs in that green laurel

  The high, new miracle that in our time

  The lady whom my heart is always watching

  The last, alas, of all my happy days

  The longed-for virtue that was flowering in you

  The man whose hands were ready to turn Thessaly

  The more I spread my wings, filled with desire

  The noble tree I’ve loved so many years

  Then when my heart was eaten by love’s worms

  The one for whom I traded Sorgue for Arno

  There may have been a time when love was sweet

  There never was a lake or river, Orso

  The sacred prospect of your city makes

  The sea has fewer fish among its waves

  The soft breeze spreads and vibrates in the sunlight

  The star of love was flaming in the East

  The stars, the heavens, and the elements

  The sun that showed me how to get to Heaven

  The sweet hill country where I left myself

  The time is gone, alas, when I could live

  The time so short, the thought so swift that brings

  The tranquil breeze that passes, murmuring

  The way a simple butterfly, in summer

  This frail and brittle goodness that we cherish

  This humble wild thing, with tiger’s heart, or bear’s

  This noble breeze that clears the hills again

  This noble soul that starts to move away

  Those eyes I spoke about so heatedly

  Those lovely eyes that hurt me are the only

  Those verses full of pity where I saw

  Though you have left me, my Sennuccio

  To make a graceful one his sweet vendetta

  Toward the sweet shadow of those lovely leaves

  To wish for evening and to hate the dawn

  Tree of victorious triumph, crowning both

  Twelve ladies chastely resting at their ease

  Twenty-one years Love held me in the fire

  Two great opponents were united once:

  Two lovely eyes, brimming with virtue’s sweetness:

  Two roses, freshly picked in Paradise

  Use one of these to rest your cheek, my lord

  Wandering bird that can continue singing

  Weep, ladies, weep, and let Love weep as you do;

  “What are you doing, soul? What do you think?

  What are you doing? Thinking? Why look still

  What destiny of mine, what force, what trick

  What do I do? Can you advise me, Love?

  Whatever’s strange and rare

  What fear I feel when I recall that day
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  What fortune was it that from those two eyes

  What part of Heaven was it, what Idea

  What pity, ah, what angel was so swift

  When Alexander saw the famous tomb

  When I am turned around to see the place

  When I breathe out my sighs and call your name

  When I recall the time and place where I

  When I see dawn descending from the sky

  When I think back upon that gentle glance

  When I turn round to scan those recent years

  When Love, alas, decides to reassault me

  When my desire, which rides me hard and rules me

  When now and then among the other ladies

  When Simon came upon that high conceit

  When sun, the planet marking off the hours

  When the Egyptian traitor handed him

  When through my eyes, down to my deepest heart

  Where is that brow that with the smallest sign

  White-haired and pale, the old man takes his leave

  Whoever wants to see what Heaven and Nature

  With food my lord always provides profusely—

  You breezes that surround those curling tresses

  You, Love, who stayed with me in happy times

  Your charger, Orso, can be given reins

  You seem to show me, Love, that you would like

  You soul in bliss, who often come to me

  You, Soul, who see so many different things

  PRAISE FOR

  The Poetry of Petrarch

  “To read love poetry—to speak of the language of love—is to read Petrarch, who is largely responsible for inventing what W. B. Yeats called ‘the old high way of love.’ David Young has made the old way new again: his translation is limpid, uncluttered, rhythmically alive, and, above all, readable. Lovers of poetry will discover here the language they have spoken all their lives.”

  —JAMES LONGENBACH

  “David Young’s new version of Petrarch makes this great poet seem closer to us than before, both in language and as a living presence. His marginal comments and introduction help to convey a coherent sense of Petrarch the man, his life, and the myth he made of it.”

  —W. S. MERWIN

  “True love—or rather, the truest—is always obsessive and unrequited. No one has better dramatized how it scorches the heart and fires the imagination than Petrarch did, centuries ago. He dipped his pen in tears and wrote the poems that have shaped our sense of love—its extremes of longing and loss—ever since. Now in David Young’s elegant new versions, his songs are as soaring and searing as ever. Indeed, not only is this a vibrant translation for our day but, their immense range slowly savored, these poems will also sound anew the depths of each reader’s own heart.”