but my self-hatred now has reached its limit
and I am sick of all the tears I shed;
I’d rather that my tombstone was left blank
than that your name be carved on marble as
the source of loss, at that time when my spirit
is parted from the flesh it lives with now.
If one heart full of faithful love, therefore,
can please you without tempting you to torture,
then let it please you to have mercy on it;
if your disdain should seek to glut itself
some other way, it’s wrong and it will fail;
for that I’m thankful to myself and Love.
83
As long as my two temples are not white
(though time is learning how to grizzle them),
I will not feel secure to risk myself
where Love employs his arrows and his bow.
Not that I really fear he’ll hurt me more,
maim me or kill me while I am still snared,
or split my heart, since he’s already pierced it,
and filled it with his cruel poisoned darts.
Tears do not run down from my eyes these days,
but they do know the way there, notwithstanding,
and nothing acts to block their path just yet;
the fiery ray can surely make me hot,
but it can’t burn me now; the cruel image
bothers my sleep but cannot break it off.
84
“Go on and weep, my eyes: accompany
the heart whose death you’ve helped to bring about.”—
“Yes, that’s exactly what we do, but we
have to lament another’s error more.”
“It was through you that Love first made his entry,
and still he comes, as if it were his home.”—
“We opened up to him because of hope
that stirred within the man who’s dying now.”
“Oh, you can claim these faults were just the same,
but you went first and you were very greedy
for that first sight that brought us both to ruin.”
“What makes us sad beyond these other things
is just how rare true justice is these days,
when some must take the blame for others’ faults.”
85
I’ve always loved, I go on loving still,
and I’ll love even more, day after day,
that sweet place I return to, full of tears
at times when Love comes over me with sadness;
and I am fixed to love the time, the hour,
that took away my base and mundane cares,
most of all she whose lovely face makes me
in love with goodness by her great example.
But who’d have thought these things would so converge,
knocking my heart this way and that, here, there,
all these sweet enemies I love so much?
What force you conquer me today with, Love!
And had not hope grown greater with desire,
I would fall dead where I most want to live.
86
I’ll always hate the window from which Love
has shot a thousand arrows at me now,
because they haven’t killed me, none of them,
and yet it’s good to die when life has peaked;
but staying longer in my earthly prison
has brought me countless evils, sad to say;
I’m pained the more because they’ll stay with me:
the soul can’t be untangled from the heart.
Oh, miserable soul, you should have known
by now, through long experience, that none
can turn Time back, and none can rein it in!
I’ve warned you many times with words like these:
“Begone, sad soul; for he who is well past
his happiest days is not departing early.”
87
As soon as bowstring’s loosed and arrow flies,
an expert marksman knows at some great distance
which shot is wasted, which shot has a chance
to find the target he intends to strike;
the same way, Lady, as you felt the shot
pass from your eyes straight to my inner parts
you knew you’d hit the heart and that it would
weep from its wound, tears everlastingly;
and I am sure, observing this, you said:
“Unhappy lover, where’s his passion headed?
Here is the arrow Love will kill him with.”
Now, though, because they see how pain can rule me,
what my two enemies will do is not
design my death, just elevate my torment.
88
Since what I hope for is so long in coming
and what remains of life is much too brief,
and faster than a gallop, made retreat;
I do flee now, of course, but weak and lame
where passion has deformed me on one side,
escaped to safety, bearing on my face
the scars I got in Love’s unlovely wars.
And thus I counsel: “You who go that way,
turn back your steps, and you whom Love inflames,
do not go on in those ferocious fires,
for even though I live, I am but one
of thousands. None escaped. The enemy
was strong, though wounded in her heart.”
89
I fled the prison in which Love had held me
for all those many years, slave to his will;
it would take long to tell you all, my ladies,
how much I found my liberty unwelcome.
My heart was telling me that he could live no more
out on his own, and then along the way
I saw the traitor Love so well disguised
he could have fooled a wiser man than I.
This led to many sighs and to my saying:
“Ah me, the yoke and all the chains and shackles
were sweeter far to me than going free!”
Oh, miserable me, I saw too late,
and now I struggle to escape the error
in which I wrapped myself so willingly!
90
Her golden hair was loosened to the breeze
that twined it in a thousand lovely knots;
a bright light burned unmeasured in her eyes
that are so sparse and grudging of it now;
it seemed to me (I’m not sure if she meant it)
her faced showed pity, coloring a bit;
and I, who had love’s tinder in my breast,
is it surprising I went up in flames?
Her walk was not a mortal being’s walk,
it had an angel’s form, and her words too
were different from a merely human voice:
a spirit all celestial, a living sun
was what I saw; and if she’s not so now,
a wound’s not healed because a bowstring’s loosened.
91
The gracious lady whom you loved so much
has suddenly departed from our midst,
and, as I dare to hope, risen to Heaven,
since all her actions were so sweet and gentle.
It’s time to find the two keys of your heart,
which she possessed in life, recover them,
then follow her, a straight and open road:
no further earthly weights need hold you down.
Since you’re disburdened of your greatest care,
you won’t have trouble setting down the rest,
and rising like a pilgrim, unencumbered;
now you can see how all created things
run toward their deaths, and how carefree the soul
needs to become to make the dangerous crossing.
92
Weep, ladies, weep, and let Love weep as you do;
weep, lovers all now, all across the land,
since he is dead, who meant to do you honor
within this world, as long as he was living.
And as for me, I hope my biting sorrow
will not be such that it obstructs my tears,
that it will have the courtesy to let me
sigh all the sighs that will unpack my heart.
Weep, rhymes, as well, let all the verses weep,
because our loving master, master Cino,
has now departed newly from our midst.
Weep too, Pistoia, and your perverse people;
you’ve lost a neighbor who was kind and gentle;
and Heaven rejoice, where he has now arrived.
93
How many times Love has instructed me:
“Write what you’ve seen, write it in golden letters,
how I can make my followers change color
and in one moment leave them dead or living.
“There was a time you felt it in yourself,
a loud exemplar in the lovers’ chorus;
and then a project freed you from my grasp,
and then I overtook you as you fled,
“and if those lovely eyes wherein I showed you
my very self, sweet fortress where I lingered
when I broke up the hardness of your heart,
“if they restore my bow, that shatters all,
perhaps your face will not remain so dry,
for I am fed by tears, as you well know.”
94
When through my eyes, down to my deepest heart,
the image of my lady overmasters me,
all else departs, which leaves the stricken soul
unable to empower lifeless limbs;
and from that miracle a second comes:
sometimes the power that is driven out,
fleeing itself, comes to a separate place
that takes revenge and makes the exile sweet;
two faces, then, take on the same dead color,
because the vigor that gave life to them
resides no longer where it used to be.
I recollected this the other day
seeing a pair of lovers so transformed
their faces looked the way mine usually does.
95
If I could get my thoughts down in these verses
the way I have them captured in my heart,
there’s no soul living that could be so cruel
as to lack pity nor dissolve in grief.
But you, blessed eyes, from whom I took that blow
against which there’s no armor, shield, or helmet,
you see me wholly, outside and within,
even when no laments express my sorrow.
Because your vision lights me up inside
as sunlight does through glass, let that suffice
to show my love without my even speaking.
Mary and Peter were not harmed by faith;
alas, it’s just my own that is so hurtful.
I know you understand this, no one else.
96
I’m so defeated by this endless wait
and by the drawn-out war of my own sighs,
that I have learned to hate what I desired
and all the snares that bound my willing heart.
That lovely smiling face of hers, however,
I carry as a picture in my heart
and everywhere I look it’s what I see,
which drives me back into my first tormentings.
I went awry when first my former road
was blocked to me, my road of freedom;
it makes no sense to chase what takes the eyes;
my soul ran free before, and much at risk,
where she now goes around at someone’s bidding,
despite the fact that she’s sinned only once.
97
Ah, liberty, sweet freedom, how you’ve shown,
by leaving me, my former situation
when that fell arrow made the first great wound
from which I cannot ever hope to heal!
My eyes grew so enamored of their woe
that reason’s curbs and reins are no avail
for they dislike all other mortal works
because I trained them to from the beginning!
I cannot seem to listen but to those
who speak about my death; her name alone
is what I fill the air with, its sweet sound;
Love doesn’t send me elsewhere, and my feet
do not know any other road; my hands
can use a paper only for her praise.
98
Your charger, Orso, can be given reins
that will control his course, but who can curb
your heart till he cannot get loose again
if he desires honor, hates the opposite?
Don’t sigh; he cannot lose his fame and worth
even if you’re prevented from attending,
because his glory argues his inclusion
and says that no one else precedes him there.
May it suffice that he’ll be in the field
on the elected day, bearing the arms
he rightly owns by time, love, strength, and birth.
And he’ll cry out: “My lord and I both burn
with noble aspiration, though his absence
means he can’t follow me, which makes him sick.”
99
Since you and I have proved so frequently
how false our hopes have been, lift up your hearts
and help them find a state where they are happy
because they seek the highest good of all.
This mortal life is really like a meadow
whose grass and flowers also hide a serpent,
and anything that entertains our eyes
is there to snare our minds and souls the more.
You therefore, if you ever hope to have
a peaceful mind before your final day,
must emulate the few and not the mob.
Someone could well accuse me: “Brother, you
keep pointing out the way, astray yourself,
and maybe even now more lost than ever.”
100
That window where one sun is visible
when it shall please her, and the other one
that’s visible at noon, and then the window
that cold air rattles when the north wind blows,
also the stone where, when the days are long,
my lady sits conversing with herself,
and all the places where her lovely body
has cast its shadow or set down its foot,
and that cruel pass where Love took me in ambush,
and this fresh season that, year in, year out,
passes the anniversary of my wounding,
that face of hers as well, and all those words
that are fixed deep within my heart—these things
have made my eyes too apt to weep these tears.
101
Alas, I know that she who pardons no man
makes all of us her melancholy prey
and that the world quite rapidly forgets us
and only briefly keeps its faith with us;
there isn’t much reward for so much yearning
and now the last day thunders in my heart.
But Love still doesn’t want to set me free
and still exacts his tribute from my eyes.
I know our days, our minutes, and our hours
pack off our years, and I am not deceived
but subject to a power more than magic’s.
My passion and my reason have been fighting
seven plus seven years; reason will win
if souls down here can understand what’s best.
102
When the Egyptian traitor h
anded him
the honored head of Pompey, Caesar wept,
or so we’re told; he hid his boundless joy
behind external tears, concealing it;
and Hannibal, when he could see that Fortune
had turned so cruel to his afflicted empire,
laughed in the midst of his lamenting people,
to vent his bitterness another way;
and thus it happens—every soul may cloak
the passion of the moment with its opposite,
a face that’s clear or else a face that’s dark.
Thus if at any time I laugh or sing
you may be sure I do it as a way
to cover up my weeping from the world.
103
Hannibal won but later did not know
how to make proper use of his good victory;
be careful then, my lord, that you yourself
do not experience something of that sort.
The mother bear is raging for her cubs
who found a bitter harvest this past May;
her teeth and claws grow harder, and within
she fuels her rage and plots revenge on us.
So therefore, while her recent sorrow burns,
do not put up your honorable sword;
but let it take you where your fortune beckons:
along the straight and narrow road where you
can earn a fame and honor that will last
beyond your life a thousand thousand years.
104
The longed-for virtue that was flowering in you
when Love began to battle with you, now
produces fruit that’s worthy of the flower
and makes my hope begin to be fulfilled.
My heart then prompts me to put pen to paper
and write a verse to amplify your fame,
for even sculpture may not last enough
to give a person life through solid marble.
Do you believe that Caesar or Marcellus,
Paulus or Africanus, grew so famous
because of any hammer’s work, or anvil’s?
No, my Pandolfo, such stuff’s far too frail
to last for long, whereas our kind of study
makes men immortal and brings lasting fame.
105
I never wish to sing the way I used to
I wasn’t understood somebody scorned me,
one can be heartbroken in a pleasant place.
Sighing all the while does no good.
It’s snowing in the mountains everywhere;
and dawn is quite close by so I’m awake.
A sweet and honest act is something noble;
a lady who is lovely pleases me
if in her face she shows a haughty disregard
unless she’s proud and stubborn.
Love needs no sword to govern his domain.
Whoever’s lost his way let him turn back;
and he who has no house can sleep on grass;
who has no gold, or loses it,