old Vulcan sets to work: he sweats and pants,
his forge producing bitter bolts for Jove,
who throws them down; it snows and then it rains,
without respecting Caesar more than Janus;
earth weeps, the sun stays far away
because he sees that his dear friend is elsewhere.
Now Mars and Saturn, evil stars, grow bolder;
Orion, armed, begins to shatter tackle,
the tillers and the shrouds of seamen break.
Aeolus vents his anger: Neptune, Juno
learn how it hurts us when that lovely face,
the one the angels wish for, isn’t here.
42
But now that her sweet smile, soft and humble,
no longer hides away its novel beauties,
the ancient blacksmith who’s Sicilian
flexes his arms in vain at his old forge;
for Jove has dropped his weapons from his hands
(tempered in Mongibello though they were);
his sister earth is bit by bit renewing
herself beneath Apollo’s friendly gaze.
And from the shore there comes a western wind
so mariners can sail without precautions, while
it wakes the flowers in the grassy meadows;
the harmful planets flee in all directions
dispersed before that lovely face of hers
on whose account I’ve shed so many tears.
43
Latona’s son had looked nine times already
from his high balcony, in search of her,
who made him sigh in vain in times gone by
and now moves sighs of like kind from another;
he tired of searching when he couldn’t find
where she was living, near or far, and seemed
like one gone mad with grief who hunts around
to find a much-loved thing that he has lost.
And thus it was that, staying to himself,
he did not see that face return which I
will praise, if I live, on a thousand pages;
it’s true as well, that pity had transformed her:
her brilliant eyes were just then shedding tears—
and thus the air retained its former state.
44
The man whose hands were ready to turn Thessaly
crimson with civil blood sat down and wept
to mourn his daughter’s husband’s death; he knew
that severed head by its familiar features;
the shepherd too, who broke Goliath’s brow,
wept for the rebel son from his own family,
and losing all control in grief for Saul,
took out his anger on a wild mountain.
But you who never blanch because of pity,
you’re well defended from Love’s deadly bow,
he draws and shoots his arrows all in vain;
you see me torn to death a thousand times
and no tears issue from your lovely eyes;
instead they flash annoyance and disdain.
45
My enemy, in whom you watch your eyes
gazing on that which Love and Heaven honor,
enamors you with beauties not his own
happy and sweet beyond all mortal limits.
By listening to him, Lady, you have run me
out of the place where I desired to be—
miserable exile!—even if I’m not worthy
to occupy the place where you now dwell.
But had I been nailed firmly in its place,
the mirror would not then have so defined you
and made you harsh, pleased with yourself, and cold.
You’ve heard the tale, remember, of Narcissus?
The vanity you practice has one outcome—
though grass does not deserve a flower so fair.
46
The gold, the pearls, the flowers red and white
that winter should have withered and made languid,
are thorns that prick, both poisonous and sharp,
I feel along my breast and in my sides.
Therefore my tearful days are clearly numbered,
since sorrows of this size do not grow old;
but most I blame those mirrors, murderous—
they’ve worn you out with gazing at yourself.
My lord they’ve silenced, he who pled my case;
he gave up and grew still because he saw
that your desires ended in yourself;
those mirrors come from waters deep in Hell,
that tinged them with forgetfulness forever,
and they gave birth to my incipient death.
47
Inside my heart I felt my spirits dying,
those spirits that receive their life from you;
and since all earthly creatures have an instinct
I let desire, now reined tight, go loose,
and off it went: the path was all grown over,
the path it wants to travel, night and day,
the one from which I try to pull it back,
and there it brought me, tardy and confused,
into the very sight of your bright eyes,
eyes I avoid in order not to pain them.
I cannot live much longer, since your glance
has much to do with whether I survive;
I’ll die, unless I follow my desire.
48
If fire never puts a fire out,
nor river can grow dry receiving rain,
but things increase by contact with their ilk,
and even oppositions spur each other;
then you who rule our thinking, oh, great Love,
you who have made me one soul in two bodies,
why do you come in an outmoded shape
and make desire shrink by its own surplus?
Perhaps the way the Nile, thundering down,
makes deaf all those who live too near its noise,
the way the sun blinds those who stare into it,
the way desire, with no sense of limits,
is lost when its objective’s too immense,
flies fast, flies hard, and is by that made slow.
49
Although I’ve tried to hinder you from lying
and honored your achievement, tongue (you ingrate),
you haven’t won me honor back; so far
it’s mostly been a share of wrath and shame;
the more I call on you to help me out,
entreating mercy, the colder you become,
and if you speak, the words are jumbled up
like someone who is mumbling in his sleep!
You doleful tears, you stay with me all night,
just when I feel the need to be alone,
and then you flee the presence of my peace.
You sighs, who bring me anguish, you as well,
you limp along, so crippled and so slow!
My eyes alone can speak about my heart.
50
At that time when the sky goes slanting quickly
off to the West, and when our day flies off
to people who are likely waiting for it,
a good old woman maybe finds herself
alone and far from home; she’s tired, but
her steps redouble on her pilgrimage;
and then, although alone
and at her twilight hour,
she may well be consoled
by brief repose and by forgetfulness
of all her labor all along the way.
But I, alas, what pain I have by day
seems to grow greater still
when light eternal takes its leave of us.
And when the sun rotates his flaming wheels
to make way for the night, and there descend
a host of shadows from the highest mountains,
the ti
ller of the fields collects his tools,
and with some simple tunes he hums or sings,
alleviates the burdens of his mind;
and then he sets his table
with poor and simple food
(the acorns people praise
while studiously still avoiding them).
Let those who can, be merry when they like,
but I have never had a restful hour,
much less a happy one,
for all the changing of the skies and planets.
And when the shepherd sees the gorgeous rays
of that great planet sinking toward its nest
and all the eastern pastures growing dark,
he rises to his feet and leaves the grass
and leaves the springs and beech trees, takes his crook
and gently uses it to move his flock;
then far from other people
he finds a hut or cave
and strews its floor with greens
and stretches out to sleep without a care.
Oh, cruel Love! It’s then you urge me most
to hunt the wild creature who destroys me
her voice, her spoor, her tracks;
but you don’t help me catch her as she flees.
And mariners will shelter in a cove
when sun is gone, they’ll stretch their tired limbs
and rest upon hard wood and under canvas.
But I, though sun may go beneath the waves,
and manage to leave Spain behind his back,
Granada and Morocco and the Pillars,
while men, and women too,
the world and all its creatures,
find rest and calm their ills,
I find I cannot shed my mounting grief:
I mourn because each day extends my losses,
and my desire, nearly ten years old,
just keeps on growing greater,
and I don’t see who’s going to free me from it.
And (since it eases me to speak of this)
I see the oxen coming home at evening
unyoked, returning from the fields they plowed.
My sighs—why aren’t they ever taken from me,
why am I not unyoked at any time?
Why must my eyes be wet both night and day?
Oh, miserable me!
What was I doing when
I fixed my eyes at first
upon her lovely face as if to sculpt it
and place it in imagination where
it could not be removed except by Death,
who takes away all things?
I’m not sure I believe that Death can do it.
Song, if being with me
from morning until evening
has made you of my party,
you won’t go round and show yourself too much;
and you’ll pay little heed to those who praise you;
consider as you move from hill to hill
how fire burns me down
all from this living stone on which I lean.
51
That light that blinds, even when far away,
had it come any closer to my eyes,
then just the way that Thessaly transformed,
I would have changed my kind and shape completely.
And since I can’t take on her form and look
more than I have so far, face marked with care
(not that it wins me any grace or mercy),
I’d sooner I became the hardest stone,
diamond, perhaps, or maybe lovely marble,
all white with fear, or maybe jasper crystal,
which would enchant the stupid, greedy rabble;
and then I would be free of this harsh yoke
that makes me envy that old man, so tired,
whose shoulders make a shade for all Morocco.
52
Diana’s form did not delight her lover,
when just by chance he got a look at her
bathing all naked in the cooling waters,
more than the cruel mountain shepherdess
delighted me while rinsing out the veil
that keeps her golden curls from the wind;
she made me then, despite the sun’s hot rays,
shiver a little with the chill of love.
53
Noble spirit, you who rule those limbs
within which dwell a lord who’s wise and brave
and unappeasable and peregrine:
now that you’ve grasped the honored staff of office
with which you can both chastise Rome and teach
her citizens to seek the one true path,
I speak to you because I don’t see else
a ray of virtue in this darkened world,
or anyone ashamed of doing evil.
What Italy expects or yearns for, I
don’t know; she doesn’t seem to feel her woes;
she’s idle, old, and slow;
will no one wake her, will she sleep forever?
I wish that I could grab her by her hair!
I have no hope that from her slothful sleep
she’ll raise her head, however much men shout,
she’s so oppressed, so sorely burdened now;
but Rome, our chief, perhaps by destiny,
is now entrusted to your arms, and you
can use them to awake her, shake her up.
So thrust your hand into those unkempt locks,
those tangled, ancient tresses, and help raise
this poor and slothful creature from the mud.
I who by day and night bewail her torment
entrust my hopes to you, the greater part,
for if the race of Mars
is ever going to see its ancient worth
it seems to me it’ll do it in your era.
Those ancient walls the world still fears and loves
and trembles at when it remembers times
now past and gone, turning to look at them;
the stones that once enclosed remains of men
who will be well remembered in the future
unless the universe itself dissolves,
and everything is swallowed up in ruin,
all hope, through you, to renovate themselves.
Oh, faithful Brutus, oh, great Scipios,
how pleasing to you must be these events,
if news of them has come to you down there,
how suitably your office has been filled!
How glad Fabricius is,
to have some word of it, so that he says:
“My Rome will once again be beautiful!”
If Heaven cares at all for earthly things,
the souls who are the citizens up there
and who have left their bodies on this earth
all beg you to conclude the civil strife
because of which the people are not safe,
and pilgrims cannot visit holy sites,
sites that were once well tended, but in war
have actually become the dens of thieves,
and only goodness finds the doors barred there
where every sort of evil act is practiced
among the statues and denuded altars
(how sharp the contrast is!),
they even signal their attacks and fights
by using bells hung up to worship God.
The weeping women, the defenseless crowd
of callow youths and old exhausted men
who hate themselves and their protracted lives,
the friars, robed in black or gray or white,
and all the other legions of the sick
and the unfortunate, who call “God! Help!”
and all the poor and destitute, exposing
their sores and wounds, by thousands and by thousands,
enough to bring a Hannibal to tears.
If you look closely at the house of God
that’s all in flames today and y
ou put out
some of those sparks you see,
you’ll pacify those wills that are inflamed
and earn some praises for your works in Heaven.
The bears, the wolves, the lions, eagles, snakes
give frequent trouble to a marble column
and often to themselves do harm as well;
because of them that noble lady weeps
who’s called on you to pull up by the roots
the evil weeds that are not going to flower.
A thousand years and more have passed since she
was first established in that place by those
souls of nobility who’ve long since died.
Ah, new inhabitants, all much too proud,
Lacking in reverence to so great a mother!
Espouse her, father her:
all kinds of help is looked for at your hand;
the greater Father’s bent on other works.
It rarely happens that injurious Fortune
fails to oppose high deeds and undertakings,
for she agrees unwillingly to glory.
Now smoothing out the way for you to come
she makes me overlook her past offenses
because for once she’s acting in support;
because, within the memory of the world,
no mortal man has ever had a path
as clear and open as this is to you
to make yourself the benefit of fame;
for you can raise her up, if I’m correct,
restore this noble monarchy at last.
Such glory for you when
they say: “Some helped her in her youth and strength:
He rescued her from death in her old age.”
Above the rock Tarpeian, Song, you’ll see
a mounted knight whom all Italia honors,
who cares for others more than for himself.
Tell him: “One who has yet to see you close,
who loves you from a distance, through your fame,
says Rome forever will
with eyes of sorrow, brimming with her tears,
beg you for help from all her seven hills.”
54
Because she bore Love’s ensign in her face
a foreign beauty moved my foolish heart
and made all others seem to me less worthy;
but as I followed her across green grass
I heard a voice say loudly, from far off:
“How many steps you’re wasting in that wood!”
I stood then in the shadow of a beech,
all pensive, and began to gaze around me,
and realized that this path was full of peril;
and just as it struck noon I came back home.
55
That fire which I thought had spent itself
—the season cold, my age no longer fresh—
now flares back up, with anguish to my soul.
They had not been extinguished, I see now,
those embers: they were simply covered over;