And most it wounds when most it charms our eyes,
At once the tempter and the paradise.
And would you, then, sweet peace of mind restore,
10 And in fair calm expect your parting hour,
Leave the mad train, and court the happy few.
Well may it be replied, ‘O friend, you show
Others the path, from which so often you
Have stray’d, and now stray farther than before.’
Eighteenth Century
JAMES CAULFEILD, EARL OF CHARLEMONT (1728–99)
Caulfeild was an Irish statesman; he translated 21 sonnets in Select Sonnets of Petrarch (1822). Text from Bohn’s Illustrated Library (1859).
P218: Tra quantunque leggiadre donne e belle
WHENE’ER amidst the damsels, blooming bright,
She shows herself, whose like was never made,
At her approach all other beauties fade,
As at morn’s orient glow the gems of night.
Love seems to whisper, – ‘While to mortal sight
Her graces shall on earth be yet display’d,
Life shall be blest; ’till soon with her decay’d,
The virtues, and my reign shall sink outright.’
Of moon and sun, should nature rob the sky,
10 The air of winds, the earth of herbs and leaves,
Mankind of speech and intellectual eye,
The ocean’s bed of fish, and dancing waves;
Even so shall all things dark and lonely lye,
When of her beauty Death the world bereaves!
P248: Chi vuol veder quantunque pò, Natura
Whoever Beholds Her Must Admit That His Praises Cannot Reach Her Perfection
WHO wishes to behold the utmost might
Of Heaven and Nature, on her let him gaze,
Sole sun, not only in my partial lays.
But to the dark world, blind to virtue’s light!
And let him haste to view; for death in spite
The guilty leaves, and on the virtuous preys;
For this loved angel heaven impatient stays;
And mortal charms are transient as they’re bright!
Here shall he see, if timely he arrive,
10 Virtue and beauty, royalty of mind,
In one bless’d union join’d. Then shall he say
That vainly my weak rhymes to praise her strive,
Whose dazzling beams have struck my genius blind. –
He must for ever weep if he delay!
P310: Zefiro torna e ’l bel tempo rimena
ZEPHYR returns and winter’s rage restrains,
With herbs, with flowers, his blooming progeny!
Now Progne prattles, Philomel complains,
And spring assumes her robe of various dye;
The meadows smile, heaven glows, nor Jove disdains
To view his daughter with delighted eye;
While Love through universal nature reigns,
And life is fill’d with amorous sympathy!
But grief, not joy, returns to me forlorn,
10 And sighs, which from my inmost heart proceed
For her, by whom to heaven its keys were borne.
The song of birds, the flower-enamell’d mead,
And graceful acts, which most the fair adorn,
A desert seem, and beasts of savage prey!
P311: Quel rosignuol che sì soave piagne
THAT nightingale, who now melodious mourns
Perhaps his children or his consort dear,
The heavens with sweetness fills; the distant bourns
Resound his notes, so piteous and so clear;
With me all night he weeps, and seems by turns
To upbraid me with my fault and fortune drear,
Whose fond and foolish heart, where grief sojourns,
A goddess deem’d exempt from mortal fear.
Security, how easy to betray!
10 The radiance of those eyes who could have thought
Should e’er become a senseless clod of clay?
Living, and weeping, late I’ve learn’d to say
That here below – Oh, knowledge dearly bought! –
Whate’er delights will scarcely last a day!
JOHN LANGHORNE (1735–79)
According to Watson, English Petrarchans, p. 10, Langhorne was a Somerset clergyman, who also translated Plutarch (1770). His Poetical Works, from which these two poems come, was published in 1766. Note that ‘Where is that face…’ contains only 12 lines.
P269: Rotta è l’alta colonna e ’l verde lauro
FALL’N the fair column, blasted is the bay,
That shaded once my solitary shore!
I’ve lost what hope can never give me more,
Though sought from Indus to the closing day.
My twofold treasure death has snatch’d away,
My pride, my pleasure, left me to deplore:
What fields far-cultur’d, nor imperial sway,
Nor orient gold, nor jewels can restore.
O destiny severe of human kind!
10 What portion have we unbedew’d with tears?
The downcast visage and the pensive mind
Through the thin veil of smiling life appears;
And in one moment vanish into wind
The hard-earn’d fruits of long laborious years.
P299: Ov’è la fronte che con picciol cenno
WHERE is that face, whose slightest air could move
My trembling heart, and strike the springs of love?
That heaven, where two fair stars, with genial ray,
Shed their kind influence on life’s dim way?
Where are that science, sense, and worth confest,
That speech by virtue, by the graces drest?
Where are those beauties, where those charms combin’d,
That caus’d this long captivity of mind?
Where the dear shade of all that once was fair,
10 The source, the solace, of each amorous care;
My heart’s sole sovereign, nature’s only boast?
– Lost to the world, to me for ever lost!
REVEREND WILLIAM COLLIER (1743–1803)
Clergyman and Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Collier translated six of Petrarch’s sonnets in the second volume of his Poems on Various Occasions (1800).
P263: Arbor vittoriosa, triunfale
Tree of triumphant victory! whose leaf
For bards and heroes forms the glorious crown,
How many days of blended joy and grief
Have I from thee, through life’s short passage known?
Lady most noble! Who in Virtue’s field
Reapest unrivall’d honour, all thy care;
To thee must Love his arts insidious yield,
Whose calm discretion sees, and scorns the snare.
The pride of birth, with all that here we hold
10 Most precious, sparkling gems or massy gold,
Abject alike in thy regard appear
Nay e’en thy charms, the world’s fix’d wonder raise
No joy in thee, but as their splendours blaze
From Chastity’s true light, serenely clear.
SIR BROOKE BOOTHBY (1743–1824)
Boothby was a member of the literary society at Lichfield (including Anna Seward, Erasmus Darwin and the Edgeworths) and a friend of Rousseau, whom he defended against the attack of Edmund Burke. He translated Racine’s Britannicus. Sonnet 21 from Sorrows Sacred to the Memory of Penelope (1796), written after his daughter Penelope died at the age of four. Poor Penelope must be the youngest Laura-surrogate in this volume.
P312: Né per sereno ciel ir vaghe stelle
Not silvery stars that gem the robe of night;
Nor painted vessels, bounding o’er the main;
Nor gallant bands of warriours on the plain;
Nor theatres, in gorgeous pomp bedight;
Not labour’s song, that makes the task sem ligh
t;
Nor tales of love, in high and artful strain;
Nor by fresh fountain’s side, the virgin train,
Winning the ear with accents of delight;
Can charm my sorrows: to these weary eyes,
10 The world is one vast desert, wild and drear;
Dead, like my hopes, all Nature’s works appear;
And sunk the sun of joy, no more to rise.
The step of Grace, and Beauty’s radiant bloom,
Are but mementos of the mouldering tomb.
SIR WILLIAM JONES (1746–94)
Jones was the most noted Orientalist of his time and the first English scholar to master Sanskrit. He was a jurist in India, and was reputed to have known thirteen languages thoroughly and twenty-eight fairly well. Text from Poems (1772).
P126: Chiare, fresche et dolci acque
An Ode of Petrarch, to the Fountain of Valchiusa
Ye clear and sparkling streams,
Warm’d by the sunny beams,
Through whose transparent crystal Laura play’d:
Ye boughs, that deck the grove,
Where Spring her chaplets wove,
While Laura lay beneath the quivering shade;
Sweet herbs, and blushing flowers,
That crown yon vernal bowers
For ever fatal, yet for ever dear;
10 And ye, that heard my sighs
When first she charm’d my eyes,
Soft-breathing gales, my dying accents hear.
If heaven has fix’d my doom,
That Love must quite consume
My bursting heart, and close my eyes in death;
Ah! grant this slight request,
That here my urn may rest
When to its mansion flies my vital breath.
This pleasing hope will smooth
20 My anxious mind, and sooth
The pangs of that inevitable hour;
My spirit will not grieve
Her mortal veil to leave
In these calm shades, and this enchanting bower.
Haply the guilty maid
Through yon accustom’d glade
To my sad tomb will take her lonely way;
Where first her beauty’s light
O’erpower’d my dazzled sight,
30 When Love on this fair border bade me stray;
There sorrowing shall she see,
Beneath an aged tree,
Her true but hapless lover’s lowly bier;
Too late her tender sighs
Shall melt the pitying skies,
And her soft veil shall hide the gushing tear.
O! well-remember’d day,
When on yon bank she lay,
Meek in her pride, and in her rigour mild;
40 The young and blooming flowers
Falling in fragrant showers,
Shone on her neck, and on her bosom smil’d:
Some on her mantle hung,
Some in her locks were strung,
Like orient gems in rings of flaming gold;
Some, in a spicy cloud
Descending, call’d aloud
‘Here Love and Youth the reins of empire hold.’
I view’d the heavenly maid;
50 And, rapt in wonder, said
‘The groves of Eden gave this angel birth;’
Her look, her voice, her smile,
That might all heaven beguile,
Wafted my soul above the realms of earth:
The star-bespangled skies
Were open’d to my eyes;
Sighing I said ‘Whence rose this glittering scene?’
Since that auspicious hour,
This bank, and odorous bower,
60 My morning couch, and evening haunt, have been.
Well mayst thou blush, my song,
To leave the rural throng,
And fly thus artless to my Laura’s ear;
But were thy poet’s fire
Ardent as his desire,
Thou wert a song that heaven might stoop to hear.
ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, LORD WOODHOUSELEE (1747–1813)
Edinburgh judge and Augustan poet, Woodhouselee was prompted to translate some dozen sonnets to disprove the Abbé de Sade’s contention that Laura was a married woman and the mother of eleven children (Watson, English Petrarchans, p. 13). The following poem is from An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, with a Translation of a Few of his Sonnets (1812); text from Bohn’s Illustrated Library (1859).
P292: Gli occhi di ch’io parlai sí caldamente
Those eyes whose living lustre shed the heat
Of bright meridian day; the heavenly mould
Of that angelic form; the hands, the feet,
The taper arms, the crispèd locks of gold;
Charms that the sweets of paradise enfold;
The radiant lightning of her angel-smile,
And every grace that could the sense beguile
Are now a pile of ashes, deadly cold!
And yet I bear to drag this cumbrous chain,
10 That weighs my soul to earth – to bliss or pain
Alike insensible: – her anchor lost,
The frail dismantled bark, all tempest-toss’d,
Surveys no port of comfort – closed the scene
Of life’s delusive joys; – and dry the Muse’s vein.
CHARLOTTE TURNER SMITH (1749–1806)
A Sussex poet and novelist, much admired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets (1784), from which this poem is taken, ran through eleven editions by 1851, and was expanded into two volumes in 1797 (Watson, English Petrarchans, p. 12).
P90: Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi
LOOSE to the wind her golden tresses stream’d,
Forming bright waves with amorous Zephyr’s sighs;
And, tho averted now her charming eyes
Then with warm Love, and melting Pity beam’d.
Was I deceiv’d? Ah! surely, Nymph divine,
That fine suffusion on thy cheek was Love;
What wonder then those beauteous tints should move,
Should fire, this Heart, this tender heart of mine?
Thy soft melodious voice, thy air, thy shape,
10 Were of a Goddess – not a mortal Maid;
Yet though thy Charms, thy heavenly charms, should fade,
My Heart, my tender Heart, could not escape;
Nor cure for me in time or change be found:
The Dart extracted does not cure the Wound.
CAPEL LOFFT (1751–1824)
Laura, or an Anthology of Sonnets (5 vols., 1813–14) was the most ambitious collection of sonnets before Bohn: 250 sonnets in each of the four volumes of text, many of the translations by Capel Lofft himself, and his wife, Sarah Watson Finch. His inclusion of an original sonnet on the nature of women sonneteers indicates the degree to which sonneteering had recaptured the imagination of the early nineteenth century, and how closely this phenomenon still looked to Petrarch as its source. Lofft’s talents as a translator have been undervalued. Text from Laura.
318. On the Sonnets by Female Authors
I CULL’D whate’er the TUSCAN MUSE had wove
Of tenderest Elegance and highest Grace,
In her bright Fane of Constancy to place
By SORGA’S Bank, VALCLUSA’s aweful grove:
The Work and Triumph of mysterious LOVE;
Poetic texture, which Time’s chill embrace
Robs not of gloss, nor Centuries efface
Its finest tints, but still their charms improve.
When from the Tomb the Shade of LAURA sigh’d
10 Most sweet – the heaven-breath’d Accents soothe my ear
With Melody to mortal sense denied.
‘Not PETRARCH only latest Times shall hear;
‘His praise of LAURA shall her Sex inspire;
‘They emulative wake the immortal TUSCAN LYRE.’
7 Aug 1805. C.L.
<
br /> 28. To Mrs. Lofft, on a sonnet compos’d by her on the day of Petrarch’s birth, xxiv Jul.
LOV’D SONGSTRESS! who on PETRARCH’s parting DAY
Dear to the MUSE of the soft plaintive LYRE
Hast breathed such strains as might his Dust inspire
With sense, – although his LAURA sleeps in clay, –
That still survives the pure celestial Ray
Which in his breast waken’d the sacred Fire
Of tender, elegant, and high Desire
And bade his numbers wing to Heaven their Way.
Dear be THAT DAY to us! – Oft as the Hours
10 Bring its return, – if Heaven so will, – to me,
May it remind me what to Heaven I owe
For thy mild sweetness, thy poetic Powers;
For every source of purest Bliss in Thee:
And never o’er this thought may chill Oblivion flow!
24 Jul. 1803. C.L.
Nacque PETRARCA à di xx dì LUGLIO; MCCCIV;
Passò poi a più felice Vita à dì xviii di LUGLIO;
MCCCLXXIV.
[Petrarch was born on the 20th day of July, 1304; he then
passed to a happier life on the 18th of July, 1374.]
P280: Mai non fui in parte ove sì chiar vedessi
Elegiac TRANSLATED: and Address’d to Miss Sarah Watson Finch
NEVER till now so clearly have I seen
Her, whom my eyes desire, my Soul still views:
Never enjoy’d a freedom thus serene;
Ne’er thus to Heaven breath’d my enamour’d Muse:
As in this Vale sequester’d, darkly green;
Where my sooth’d heart [its] pensive thought pursues;
And nought intrusively may intervene;
And all my sweetly tender sighs renews.
To Love and Meditation faithful Shade
10 Receive the breathings of my grateful breast!
Love not in Cyprus found so sweet a Nest
As this, by Pine and arching Laurel made!
The Birds, breeze, water, branches, whisper, LOVE;
Petrarch in English Page 19
