Petrarch in English

by Thomas Roche (ed)

  When still shall be my heart and dry my eyes;

  10 Nay, first we’ll see cold fire and flaming snow:

  A year shall pass for every thread of hair

  Upon my head – and still there will be years.

  Aye, but since time so hurries on the years

  And soon we all must fare to Charon’s shore –

  What matter if with blonde or hoary hair?

  I’ll follow faithfully my tender laurel

  Through scorching heat or freezing ice and snow

  Until the last day close these anxious eyes.

  Never has earth beheld such radiant eyes –

  20 Nor in our days nor in the ancient years –

  As those that vanquish me as summer snow.

  A flood of tears, as swollen stream to shore,

  Flows from my heart to lave that cruel laurel

  Of gleaming limbs and precious golden hair.

  Sooner, I fear, shall I change mien and hair

  Than find some look of pity in the eyes

  Of my fair idol, my sweet living laurel.

  Today – well counts the heart! – marks seven years

  I’ve wended sighing over sea and shore

  30 By night and day, through rain and sleet and snow.

  Within afire, without as white as snow

  With constant thought though sadly fading hair

  I’ll go my restless way from shore to shore

  Bringing perhaps compassion to some eyes

  Who’ll read my sorry plaint in future years –

  If lives the glory of my mortal laurel.

  For Laura’ll melt my soul as sun melts snow –

  Oh hair of gold above bright sapphire eyes! –

  And bring my ship of years too soon ashore.

  GRAHAM HOUGH (1908–90)

  Hough was Professor of English at Cambridge University and Fellow of Christ’s College. Sonnet from Legends and Pastorals (1961).

  P62: Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni

  Sonnet for Good Friday

  Father of heaven, after the lost days,

  After the nights eaten with desire,

  Wondering at the fire

  That dries my heart of all enterprise,

  Please you to pour new grace

  Into my veins empty of all power;

  Please you to let my adversary tire

  Of digging pitfalls for me, go his ways.

  Lord, unpitied ten years I have served

  10 This tyrant. I who dare

  Nothing against him feel him the more harsh.

  Pity this misery no man deserved,

  Teach my thoughts how to forget their care,

  Forget their care, remembering your cross.

  JAMES WYATT COOK (1932– )

  James Wyatt Cook was Professor of English Literature at Albion College, Michigan. From his Petrarch’s Songbook Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta: A Verse Translation (1995) the series that runs from P23 – the first and longest canzone in the sequence – until the second sestina (P30) has been chosen to give some sense of the enormous variety of subjects in any sample group of Petrarch’s poetry.

  P23: Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade

  In the sweet season of my early youth

  That saw break forth, almost in grasstime still,

  The passion wild that grew into my bane –

  Because my singing sweetens bitter grief,

  I’ll sing how once I lived in liberty

  While in my dwelling place Love was disdained.

  Next I shall tell how scorn vexed Love too sorely;

  Recount, in turn, what chance befell and why,

  How I was made a warning to the world.

  10 Although elsewhere my torture

  Cruel is penned – indeed, it’s wearied now

  A thousand quills – in almost every vale

  The sound of my grave sighs reverberates

  And testifies my life is full of pain.

  And if my memory fails to serve me here

  As well as once it used to do, let my

  Woes pardon that, and one thought that alone

  So grieves it that I’m made to turn my back

  On all thoughts else, forget myself perforce;

  20 That thought my being holds, and I the husk.

  Since that day Love at first laid siege to me,

  Indeed, I tell you, many years had passed

  So that my youthful countenance was changed,

  And frozen thoughts had hardened round my heart

  To make an almost adamantine glaze

  That would not let the hard effect abate.

  No tear yet bathed my breast; none slumber broke,

  And that which in myself I could not find,

  In others’ seemed a miracle to me.

  30 Woe: What I am: What I was:

  Praise life at end; at evening praise the day.

  The cruel one of whom I tell, aware

  That, after all, no arrow’s point of his

  Had even penetrated past my robe,

  A powerful lady took into his train

  ’Gainst whom not skill, nor strength, nor begging grace,

  Availed me then nor yet avails me now.

  Those two transformed me into what I am,

  Turned me a man alive, to laurel green

  40 That shed no leaf for all the winter’s chill.

  What I became when first awareness dawned

  Of this transfiguration of my self:

  I saw my locks become that laurel frond

  That I had hoped, indeed, would be their crown;

  The feet I stood and walked and ran upon,

  As to the spirit every limb responds

  I sensed become two roots beside the waves –

  Not of Peneus – of a statelier stream;

  Felt arms transmute themselves, become two boughs:

  50 My blood runs no less cold

  Than did it when, arrayed in plumage white,

  My hope plunged stricken by a thunderbolt,

  Lay dead because he’d risen far too high.

  Thus, since I knew not where or when I might

  Recover him, by night and day, in tears,

  Where hope was reft from me, I went alone,

  Searching along the banks and in the deeps,

  And never more did my tongue cease to tell,

  While it could do so, of his dreadful fall.

  60 Hence I, with the swan’s song, its color took.

  Thus I drifted past those banks well-loved,

  And though I wished to speak, went singing ever,

  Crying “Mercy” in that alien voice;

  Nor could I ever harmonize the notes –

  Now sweet, now soft – of amorous lament

  So that her stern, fierce heart would yield to me.

  For what was there to hear? How memory sears me:

  But even more of this – or rather more

  About that sweet and bitter foe of mine

  70 Necessity bids me tell,

  Though such as she transcends the power of speech.

  That girl, who with a look rips souls away,

  Unsealed my breast, seized with her hand my heart,

  Instructing me: ‘Breathe not a word of this:’

  I saw her next in altered guise, alone

  So that, mistaking her – oh human sense

  I, fearful, spoke the truth to her instead,

  At once, then, she resumed her former face

  And made of me – alas, poor wretch – a stone,

  80 One half alive, disheartened and dismayed.

  She spoke with such a troubled countenance,

  It made me tremble there within that rock

  To hear: ‘I am perhaps, not whom you think;’

  And to myself I said: ‘If she frees me

  From stone, no life can sadden or annoy.’

  (To make me weep, my Lord, return, I pray)

  I know not how, but thence I dragged m
y feet,

  Accusing no one other than myself,

  Suspended between life and death all day.

  90 But, since my time grows short,

  And with desire my pen cannot keep pace,

  Much written in my mind I shall omit,

  And only speak of certain things that will

  Be wonders to whoever hears of them.

  Death was within me, coiled about my heart;

  Nor could my silence free it from her hand,

  Nor succor give to my enfeebled powers;

  To speak aloud had been forbidden me,

  So I cried out with paper and with ink:

  100 ‘No: I’m not mine; if I die, yours the cost.’

  I thought in her eyes surely I would change

  From one disdained to one deserving grace,

  And this hope had made me presumptuous.

  But humbleness will sometimes blow out scorn,

  Sometimes inflame it: this I quickly learned

  In darkness shrouded for a season long,

  For at those prayers my candle had gone out,

  And I could not recover anywhere

  Her shadow or some vestige of her feet.

  110 Like one who sleeps along

  His way, one day I weary fell upon

  The grass; accusing there that ray of light

  Which fled, I gave free rein to woeful tears,

  Allowing them to fall just as they would.

  And never did snow melt beneath the sun

  The way I felt myself grow faint and change

  Into a fountain underneath a beech.

  A long and tearful time I held that course.

  Who’s heard of fountains born from mortal man?

  120 I speak of things undoubted and well known.

  God only shapes the soul’s nobility;

  From no one else can she attain such grace.

  She keeps her likeness to her Maker’s state;

  And thus she’s never weary of forgiving

  Whoever with a contrite mien and heart

  Comes seeking mercy after many faults.

  And if against her nature she endures

  Long importunity, she mirrors Him –

  Does so that sin may be more greatly feared;

  130 One does not honestly repent

  Of one ill-deed who’s ready to do more.

  Since, by compassion touched, my lady deigned

  To look on me, she saw and understood

  My penance had been equal to my sin;

  Benign, she led me back to my first state.

  But nothing on this earth a wise man trusts:

  For when I pled once more, my nerves and bones

  Were turned to hardest flint; and, shaken thus,

  I lived a voice, still burdened as of old,

  140 Calling on Death, and her alone by name.

  An errant, doleful spirit (I recall)

  Through caverns tenantless, unvisited

  I wept my uncurbed daring many years

  And found at length the end of that disease,

  And turned again from flint to earthly limbs –

  To make me feel the sorrow more, I think.

  How far afield my passion I pursued:

  One day, as usual, I went to hunt;

  There that untamed one, lovely and severe,

  150 Stood naked in a fount,

  While down on her the sun burned, ardently.

  Because no other sight contented me,

  I paused to gaze on her, and she, ashamed,

  Whether in vengeance or to hide herself,

  With her hands splashed the water in my face.

  The truth I’ll tell (though it may falsehood seem):

  I felt myself drawn forth from my own shape,

  And to a stag, alone and wandering

  From wood to wood, I swiftly was transformed,

  160 And still I flee the baying of my hounds.

  O song, I never was that cloud of gold

  Which in a priceless rain came falling once –

  The one in which Jove’s fire, in part, was spent –

  But, lit by one sweet look, I’ve been a flame,

  Yes, and that bird which shears the upper air,

  Bearing her high whom my words celebrate;

  Nor could I for a new form learn to part

  From that first laurel whose sweet shade yet sweeps

  Every delight less lovely from my heart.

  P24: Se l’onorata fronde che prescrive

  Had not those honored leaves that tame the wrath

  Of heaven when high Jove thunders, not denied

  To me that crown which customarily

  Adorns one who, while shaping verses, writes,

  I’d be a friend to these your goddesses,

  The ones this age abandons wretchedly;

  But far that wrong already drives me off

  From the inventress of the olive tree.

  Indeed, no Ethiopic dust boils up

  10 Beneath the hottest sun the way I blush

  At losing such a treasured gift of mine.

  Search out, therefore, a fountain more serene,

  For mine of every cordial stands in need,

  Save only that which I well forth in tears.

  P27: Il successor di Carlo, che la chioma

  Charles’ successor who now adorns his head

  With his forefather’s crown has seized, indeed,

  Weapons to crush the horns of Babylon

  And all of those who take their name from her.

  Christ’s vicar, laden with his keys and cloak

  Returns to his own seat; and so, unless

  Some misadventure hinders him, he’ll view

  Bologna first, and then see noble Rome.

  Your mild and gentle lamb has beaten down

  10 The savage wolves; and thus will meet their end

  Whoever puts asunder lawful loves.

  Console her, therefore – she who yet stands guard –

  And comfort Rome who for her spouse laments;

  Gird on the sword at last for Jesus now.

  P28: O aspettata in ciel beata e bella

  O fair and blessed soul whom Heaven awaits

  You go arrayed in our humanity

  Not cumbered by the flesh as others are;

  Henceforth those roads will seem less hard to you

  By which you pass to His realm from below –

  God’s chosen one, handmaid obedient:

  Behold afresh your vessel that has now

  Already put behind it this blind world

  To steer for the best harbor,

  10 Solaced by a sweet wind from the west.

  That breeze, amidst this dark and shadowy vale

  Where we lament our own and others’, woes

  Will pilot you, freed from your ancient bonds,

  Along the straightest course

  To that true orient, where she is bound.

  Perhaps the loving and devoted prayers

  Of mortal beings, and their sacred tears,

  Have gone before supernal mercy’s throne;

  But maybe they were not enough, nor such

  20 That by their merit, one jot they might turn

  Aside eternal justice from its course.

  But in His grace that kindly King who rules

  In Heaven looks toward that sacred place

  Where he hung on the cross;

  Hence in the breast of this new Charlemagne

  That vengeance breathes which, tardy, saps our strength –

  Because through long years Europe sighed for it.

  Thus Christ brings succor to His cherished spouse

  So that his voice alone

  30 Makes Babylon stand quaking and afraid.

  All dwellers from the mountains to Garonne,

  Between the Rhone, and Rhine, and salty waves,

  To those most Christian banners rally now;

  And all who ever prized true valor, from<
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  The far horizon to the Pyrenees

  Will empty Spain to follow Aragon;

  From England, with the isles that ocean bathes

  Between the Oxcart and the Pillars – from,

  In short, wherever sounds

  40 The teaching of most sacred Helicon –

  All varied in their tongues and arms and dress,

  Divine love spurs them to high enterprise.

  Indeed, what love so lawful, of such worth?

  What sons, what women ever

  Have been the grounds for such a righteous wrath?

  There is a region of the world that lies

  In ice forever, under freezing snow

  Far distant from the pathway of the sun.

  There, subject to days overcast and short,

  50 There teems a folk by nature foes of peace,

  A people that is not bereaved by death.

  Should these prove more devout than usual

  And with Teutonic rage take up the sword,

  Then without doubt you’ll learn

  How much to prize Chaldeans, Arabs, Turks,

  And all who place their hopes in pagan gods

  From here to that sea red with bloody waves –

  An unclothed, frightened, backward people who

  Never close with swords; instead

  60 They trust the wind to guide their every shot.

  The time has therefore come to draw our necks

  From out the ancient yoke, to tear away

  The veil that has been wound around our eyes.

  Show noble genius, which, by Heaven’s grace

  From Apollo, the immortal one, is yours;

  And here let eloquence display its power,

  Now with the tongue, now celebrated script;

  For if you do not wonder, reading of

  Orpheus and Amphion,

  70 Then marvel not when Italy, with all

  Her sons, by your clear sermon’s note is so

  Aroused that she takes up the lance for Christ.

  For if this ancient matriarch sees truth,

  She’ll find no cause of hers

  Was ever so appropriate or fair.

  To profit from rich treasures you have turned

  The ancient pages and the modern too,

  And flown to Heaven, though in earthly form;

  You know how, from the reign of Mars, own son

  80 To great Augustus, who – thrice triumphing

  Three times adorned his locks with laurel green,

  Rome oftentimes, because of others’ wounds,

  Gave liberally so much of its own blood.

  Then why is Rome not now –

  Not ‘liberal’ – but thankful and devout

  In taking vengeance for these cruel affronts