to mourn their husbands’ deaths, the while the sea
at Salamis grew red with blood. That omen,
the miserable ruin of those people,
who came, unhappy, from the East, foretells
victory to you and yours;
and so can Marathon and those hot gates
the Lion and his few men held, and more
of which you’ve heard and read. Therefore it’s fit
that you subject both mind and knee to God,
who has reserved
your years in order that you may do good.
My song, you will see Italy, and see
the honored shore concealed from me not just
by mountain, river, sea
but by great Love, who with his noble light
gives me desire where he most inflames me;
nature, I fear, cannot give way to habit.
Go on then, song, with your companions. Love,
who makes us laugh and weep,
does not dwell just beneath the veils of ladies.
29
Green garments, blood red, black, or purple,
you never dressed a lady
who twists her hair up in a golden braid
as beautiful as is this one, who strips
my will from me, and from the path of freedom
leads me astray so far that I can bear
no lesser yoke of any kind.
And if at times my soul will arm itself
to remonstrate—it judges poorly
when plunged in doubt from all its lamentations—
she’ll call it back and then her very look
will summon it, resistless; from my heart
each frenzy is erased, and each disdain
grows sweeter at the sight of her.
For everything I’ve suffered, all for love,
and will still suffer till she heals
my heart, that one who wounded him, a rebel
to all mercy, who still can make him yearn,
there shall be vengeance; that’s if pride and anger
don’t act to lock humility from showing
that lovely way that leads to her.
The hour and the day I gazed upon
those lights, the lovely black and white
evicted me, and Love took up my place
to form the root of this new painful life,
and she in whom our age admires itself;
to see her without being awed, you’d need
to be made out of lead or wood.
No teardrop, then, that might pour from my eyes
(because those arrows in my side
bathe my poor heart in his first wound’s own blood)
no tear, I say, can lessen my desire;
the punishment is just: heart makes soul sigh
and it is simply right and fully just
that she should help to tend my wounds.
Kind stars that did attend the great event
when one womb had been singled out
and gave its lovely fruit unto this world!
Celestial is what she is, on earth,
and as the laurel keeps its leaf she keeps
her chastity: no wind or lightning storm
can seem to break or bend her.
I know full well that praising her in verse
would test the skill of anyone
who sought, however worthily, to write;
what cell does memory own that truly can
contain the virtue that we see in her,
all beauty in her eyes, sign of her worth,
the sweet key that unlocks my heart?
While the sun turns, Love has no dearer pledge,
Lady, than thou art.
30
I saw a maiden underneath a laurel,
and white she was, and cold as is the snow
which sunlight hasn’t shone upon for years;
and seeing her most lovely face, voice, hair
pleased me so much that she is in my eyes
wherever I may go, on slope or shore.
My thoughts will only then have come ashore
when green leaves are no longer on the laurel,
or when my heart is stilled, dried-up my eyes,
or fire freezes and there’s burning snow;
there are not, on my head, sufficient hairs
to number days I’d wait, or even years.
But time has wings and thus they flee, the years,
and soon we come, quite soon, to life’s last shore—
we may or we may not have grown white-haired—
and still I’ll seek its shadow, that green laurel,
in fiercest sun or in the coldest snow,
until my last day comes and shuts my eyes.
There never have been such exquisite eyes,
no, not in this our time, nor in past years;
they melt me just the way that sun melts snow,
which makes a weeping river by the shore
around the foot of a hard-hearted laurel
with diamond branches and with golden hair.
I fear that I must change my face and hair
before some pity rises in her eyes,
my idol, fashioned from the living laurel;
unless I’m counting wrong it’s seven years
since I’ve gone sighing here from shore to shore
by day and night, in heat and in the snow.
On fire inside, although my outside’s snow,
alone with all my thoughts and graying hair,
weeping forever, traversing each shore,
hoping that pity might invade the eyes
of someone who may live a thousand years
if that is the true life span of the laurel.
Topaz and gold, in sun, against the snow,
are less than is that hair and those fair eyes,
that lead my years so swiftly to the shore.
31
This noble soul that starts to move away,
called to the afterlife before her time,
will dwell, if prized the way she should be prized,
in Heaven’s choicest regions, those most blessed;
if she should stay where Venus borders Mars,
the sun itself will surely be bedimmed
since choicest souls will flock to see the sight,
and gather round to gaze on this soul’s beauty;
if she is set below the sun’s fourth sphere,
she’ll steal away the beauty of three planets
as fame and great acclaim accrue to her;
at the fifth circle, she’ll not dwell with Mars
but will soar higher, I feel sure, until
she’ll outshine Jove and every other star!
32
The closer that I come to the last day
which puts an end to all our human misery,
the more I see that Time runs swift and light,
and that my hopes in him are vain and fatuous.
I tell my thoughts: “Not too much further now
will we go on like this, speaking of love;
the hard and heavy burden that we carry
is melting like fresh snow—and we’ll have peace,
“because at last we’re going to drop the hope
that’s made us rave so long, so angrily,
the laughter and the tears, the fear and sorrow:
“we’ll see it clearly then, we’ll know how much
people run after things that are unstable,
and how their sighs are always sighed in vain.”
33
The star of love was flaming in the East
already, and that other one which makes
Juno forever jealous, in the North,
wheeling its outspread rays, all bright and lovely;
the frail old woman was awake to spin,
half-dressed and barefoot, waking up the coals,
and lovers felt the stingin
g of that moment
that they are so much given to lamenting;
when, worn down to the very nub, my hope
came to my heart by unaccustomed means
(for sleep had closed my eyes, tears kept them wet)—
and changed she was, so different from before!—
and seemed to say: “Why are you languishing?
You still can see these eyes for some time yet.”
34
If fair desire’s still alive, Apollo,
that burned within you once by Thessaly’s waves,
and if through all the years you still have not
forgot those golden tresses that you loved,
among these frosts, these cruel and bitter times,
that last as long as you conceal your face,
redeem the honor of these sacred leaves
where you were trapped, and then I was trapped too;
and by the power of that amorous hope
that once sustained you in your bitter life,
come clear this atmosphere of mist and vapor;
then both of us can see a marvelous thing—
our lady sitting out here on the grass
her arms raised up to give herself some shade.
35
Alone and pensive, crossing empty fields,
I make my way with slow, reluctant steps,
my eyes alert in case I need to flee
if I see human footprints in the sand.
This is my only way to shield myself,
from people’s knowing glances, since they read
my miserable bearing, all joy spent,
and know the fires that must rage within.
So I believe the mountains and the shores,
rivers and forests too, all know by now
the sort of life I lead, concealed from people;
yet there’s no path so savage or so wild
that Love won’t always come and join me there,
discoursing with me, as I do with him.
36
If I could hope by death to free myself
from love that makes me sad and casts me down,
by now I would have used these hands of mine
to lay these limbs in earth and shed their weight;
but since I fear that death would be a passage
from one war to another, grief to grief,
I’m at the pass and find it closed to me.
I half remain, alas, and half cross over.
It’s high time that the heartless cord release
the bowstring and its final, fatal arrow,
already wet and red with others’ blood,
and I beg Love for this, and beg that deaf one
who’s painted me with all her colors and
does not remember she should call me to her.
37
It is so weak, the thread by which it hangs,
this heavy life of mine;
if someone doesn’t aid it,
it will come quickly to its journey’s end;
for ever since the cruel departure that
I took from my sweet love,
one hope alone remains
and this in fact has kept me still alive;
it said: “While you’re deprived
of your beloved’s sight
maintain yourself, sad soul;
how do you know you won’t return again
to better times and days,
or if your solace gone might be regained?”
This hope had me sustained a little while;
it’s ebbing now. I’ve lived in it too long.
Time runs on by, and hours are so swift
to finish up their journey,
I scarce have time to notice
that I run on toward death; one ray of sun
will just have left the East when you already
see it touch the mountains
of the opposite horizon,
coiling across a huge and mighty distance.
The lives of men are short,
heavy their bodies, frail
their mortal human flesh,
so when I find myself cut off again
from her fair face,
the wings of my desire paralyzed,
my strength deserts me and I do not know
if I can live much longer in this state.
Each place I visit makes me sad when I
don’t see those lovely eyes,
soft eyes that took away
the keys of all the thoughts God gave me once;
and just so my harsh exile will hurt more
whether I walk, or sleep,
or sit, I call aloud,
and all that I’ve seen since displeases me.
How many mountains, waters,
how many seas and rivers
hide me from those two lights
that turned my total darkness to a sky
as clear and bright as noon,
so that recalling them destroys me more;
so that my cruel and deeply burdened life
can teach me how much happier I was then.
Alas, if speaking of it stokes the fire,
renews the burning passion
that was born that day
I left behind my better part, my self,
and if neglect can help love fade away
who takes me to the bait
that helps my sorrow grow,
and why not turn my silence into stone?
Certainly glass or crystal
were never more revealing
than is my soul, disconsolate,
displaying through my eyes the savage sweetness
living here in my heart,
my poor eyes always ready with their tears
seeking for her by day and then by night
who is alone the cure of their desire.
Strange pleasure that in human minds is found:
to love whatever thing
that’s new and different and
that will produce the thickest crowd of sighs!
And I am one of those whom weeping pleases;
it seems I strive to make
my eyes produce a family
of tears to match the sorrows in my heart.
Since speaking of her eyes
calls up the passion in me,
and nothing else I do
affects me quite so deeply, I must visit
often where my sorrow
and thus my eyes are punished with my heart
because they led me on the road of love.
Those golden tresses which should make the sun
go filled with envy, and
that clear gaze, serene,
from which the burning rays of Love shine hot,
so hot they’re like to bring untimely death,
and words well chosen, rare,
seldom encountered in this world
that gave themselves to me so courteously,
are taken from me, lost;
and I forgive more easily
all wrongs against me but
the one that takes the kind angelic greeting
that roused my heart;
and thus I think I’m never going to hear
a sound that will encourage me
except the sound that’s made by heaving sighs.
And just so I can weep with more delight,
her slender hands, so soft,
her gracious arms, so white,
and her sweet gestures, just a little haughty,
her lovable disdain, her humble pride,
her youthful and delicious breast,
a citadel of lofty thoughts,
hid from me now by wild and mountainous regions,
and I don’t know if I can hope
to see her once before I die
because from hour to hour
my expectation rises and then falls;
it’s never going to see
she whom high Heaven honors, she, the home
where chastity and every virtue dwell,
the place where I have prayed I might dwell too.
Song, if in her sweet place you run into
our lady, I believe
that you believe she will
reach out to touch you with her lovely hand,
the hand I am so far from;
don’t touch that hand, but at her feet, in reverence,
tell her I’ll come as quickly as I can,
either as spirit bodiless, or flesh and blood.
38
There never was a lake or river, Orso,
nor sea which all the rivers empty into,
nor shade of wall or hill or leafy branch,
nor cloud that spreads above and then rains down,
nor any object else, that blocks out sight,
nor other hindrance I’d complain about,
except the veil that veils two lovely eyes
and seems to say: “Go suffer now, and weep.”
And then that lowered gaze that kills my joys,
whether from pride or from humility,
will be the cause of my untimely death.
And I complain as well of a white hand
that always has been quick to do me harm,
rising against my eyes just like a reef.
39
I fear their fierce attack, those lovely eyes
where Love and my own death reside together
and I flee them the way a boy flees whipping;
it’s years now since I first leaped up and ran.
There is no place too high, too hard to climb,
to which desire will not take me now,
to shun the one who dissipates my senses
and leaves me, usually, as cold as stone.
Therefore, if I’ve been slow to visit you,
not to be near the one who makes me suffer,
it’s something you can probably forgive.
Indeed, just coming back at all, my friend,
to what I flee, and mastering my fear,
is no small pledge of my fidelity!
40
If Love and Death don’t manage to cut short
the new cloth which I’ve now begun to weave,
and I can free myself from this birdlime
while I am joining one truth with the other,
perhaps I can make something doubly good
between the modern style and ancient speech,
(I tell you this, of course, with trepidation)
that you will hear it all the way to Rome.
But since I lack, to finish up this project
a number of inestimable threads
that were abundant for my cherished father,
why should you keep your hands closefisted now,
against your custom? Please, open them
and you will be amazed by the results.
41
Apollo loved a tree in human form;
when it departs and leaves its proper place,