The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  arousing animals in every forest,

  can find no truce from sighing with the sun;

  and when I see them lighting up, the stars,

  I go around and weep and long for day.

  When evening comes and drives away the day,

  and darkness here is someone else’s dawn,

  I gaze in sorrow at the cruel stars

  that made my body out of feeling earth,

  and curse the day on which I saw the sun

  until I seem a man raised in a forest.

  There is no more ferocious beast in forest

  who wanders there by night or roams by day

  than she for whom I weep in shade and sun,

  past bedtime, always, staying up till dawn,

  for though I’m mortal, something made of earth,

  my fixed desire comes down from the stars.

  Before I come to join you, you bright stars,

  or fall back into Love’s dense trackless forest,

  and leave my body crumbling back to earth,

  you’d think that she might pity me, one day;

  one day would balance years, and by the dawn

  requite me for the setting of our sun.

  To watch it set along with her, that sun,

  no one around to witness us but stars,

  and just one night; then let day never dawn,

  and let her not become a tree, in forest,

  escaping, as she did that fatal day

  when Lord Apollo followed her on earth!

  I will be under earth first, in dry forest,

  and day itself be lit by tiny stars,

  before the sun will come to such sweet dawn.

  23

  In the sweet season of my early youth

  of passion born and growing like green grass

  that would become in time my source of pain—

  since singing helps to make my pains less bitter

  I’ll sing how then I lived at liberty

  while Love was merely scorned in my abode.

  And then I’ll tell how that offended him

  and what ensued that served to make of me

  a kind of grim example for the world:

  although my harsh undoing

  is written elsewhere, by a thousand pens,

  and almost every valley has been filled

  with echoes of my sighs to prove my pain.

  But if my memory doesn’t help me here

  the way it usually does, perhaps my torments

  will help excuse me, plus one single thought

  which causes so much anguish by itself

  it makes me turn my back, forget myself,

  because it holds my very being fast

  and leaves the rest of me an empty shell.

  I’ll say that since the day when Love had tried

  his first attack, some years had passed, so that

  my youthful countenance was altered some

  and round my heart the thoughts were frozen fast

  to make a surface hard as any diamond

  that my firm manner did not serve to weaken;

  no tear yet wet my breast, nor broke my sleep,

  and what was insubstantial in myself

  seemed like a miracle, observed in others.

  Alas, what am I? What was I?

  The evening crowns the day, the death the life;

  that cruel mastermind of whom I speak

  seeing his arrows launched against me

  had not yet managed to pierce through my clothes

  made his alliance with a potent Lady

  against whom wit, and force, and cries for mercy

  have not availed to help me, then or now;

  these two transformed me into what I am,

  a living man turned into a green laurel

  that sheds no leaves throughout the winter season.

  What I became, when my awareness grew

  of this great change I’d undergone, was this:

  I saw my hairs transforming into leaves,

  the leaves I’d hoped to wear as my own crown,

  and then the feet on which I stood and ran,

  according to the dictates of the spirit,

  became two roots beside the churning waters

  not of Peneus but a prouder stream,

  and my two arms transformed to wooden branches!

  It gave me no less fear

  that hope, all covered in white feathers then,

  lay thunderstruck and dead, beyond recovery,

  punished for mounting much too far and high;

  I knew not where I could recover him.

  And thus it was I went alone, and weeping,

  by night and day around the place I lost him,

  searching the riverbanks, peering in waters,

  and since that time my tongue has sung his loss

  when it has had the strength; I sing the song

  the swan sings, dying, and I have his color.

  I walked along beloved riverbanks

  from that time on, and when I wished to speak

  I sang in my new voice, beseeching mercy;

  but I could never make my amorous woes

  resound in such a way, both soft and sweet,

  to humble her ferocious heart toward me.

  What was it like to hear? The memory burns me.

  But even more than I’ve already done

  I need to sing that sweet and bitter enemy.

  Necessity demands it,

  although she’s quite beyond the power of words.

  She who can steal a soul with one swift glance

  opened my chest and took my heart in hand,

  saying, “Don’t speak of this.” I saw her next

  in such a different form I didn’t know her

  (oh human sense!) and blurted out the truth,

  all fearful, when she changed back to herself

  and turned me, oh alas, into a stone:

  a partly living, deeply frightened, stone.

  She spoke, with such an angry countenance,

  it made me tremble from within the stone:

  “I am perhaps not who you think I am!”

  And I said to myself, “If she should free me

  from being stone, no life will make me sad;

  come back, my lord, and make me weep again.”

  I don’t know how I did it, but I moved

  my feet and went away, blaming myself,

  suspended between death and life all day.

  But since my time grows short

  my pen cannot keep up with my intention

  and I’ll omit much that is in my mind

  and speak of just a few more special things

  that will be wonders to whoever hears them.

  My heart was in the grip of death, nor could

  my silence act to free it from her hand

  or bring me any other kind of help.

  Speaking out loud had been forbidden to me,

  so I cried out with paper and with ink,

  “I’m not my own. If I die, it’s your loss.”

  I thought that this might change me, in her eyes,

  from one devoid of mercy to deserving,

  and that hope made me bold; sometimes, however,

  while true humility may quench disdain,

  it can inflame it too; I learned that later

  while dressed in darkness for a season long;

  for at those prayers my light had been extinguished,

  and I, not finding anywhere her shadow

  or even any trace of where she’d stepped,

  like someone bent on sleep

  lay down exhausted on the grass one day.

  Complaining of the absence of the light,

  I let myself dissolve in angry tears

  and let them fall wherever they might land;

  no snowbank ever shrank beneath the sun

  more quickly than I melted there, becoming

  a f
ountain springing from a beech’s foot;

  I kept that up a long and tearful time.

  Whoever heard of man becoming fountain?

  And yet I speak of an undoubted fact.

  The soul’s nobility derives from God—

  for no one else can be such source of grace—

  and keeps her thus in likeness to her maker;

  and therefore she does not refuse to pardon

  whoever comes with humble face and heart

  to ask for mercy after much offending.

  And if she manages, against inclining,

  to be importuned long, she mirrors Him—

  and does this to make sinning still more feared,

  for one is not repenting

  if he’s already bound for the next sin.

  Because my lady, finally moved to pity,

  had turned to gaze on me and could well see

  how much my punishment had matched my sin,

  she kindly let me change to my first state.

  But nothing in this world can be relied on;

  for when I pled again, my nerves and bones

  were changed to hardest flint, and thus I stayed

  transfixed, a voice, still burdened as before,

  calling on Death and only her by name.

  A wandering doleful spirit, I complained

  for many years, in caves both strange and empty,

  about my unleashed boldness, I recall,

  and came eventually to my release

  and got my limbs and human movement back

  but maybe just so I’d feel sorrow more.

  I let desire draw me on so far

  that one day, while I hunted in the woods,

  I saw that lovely, cruel, and wild creature

  naked at noon and bathing.

  No other sight means anything to me

  and I so stood and gazed at her, while she

  felt shame, and then, to undertake revenge

  and camouflage, employed her hand to splash

  some water in my face. At this I changed:

  I’ll tell the truth, though it may seem a lie;

  I felt myself drawn out of my own shape

  and I became a stag, alone and wandering

  from forest unto forest, with my dogs

  pursuing me and baying as I fled.

  Oh, song, I never got to be the cloud

  of gold that came down in a precious rain

  to quench Jove’s fire, or at least in part;

  but I have certainly become a flame,

  and I have been the bird that soars above

  to raise and celebrate her with my praise;

  and never would I trade for some new shape

  that laurel I was first, in whose sweet shade

  all other pleasures vanish in my heart.

  24

  If that much-honored branch that shelters us

  from Heaven’s anger when the great Jove thunders

  had not refused to grant me that green crown

  that decorates the writers who make poems,

  I might have liked those goddesses of yours

  the current world abandons so unjustly;

  but that great slight has driven me away from

  the goddess who invented olive trees;

  the sands of Ethiopia don’t boil

  under the fiercest of its noonday suns

  more than I do at loss of what I love.

  You need to find a fountain that’s more tranquil,

  for mine’s bereft of any other moisture

  than I provide it with my falling tears.

  25

  Love used to cry, and I would cry with him

  since I was then so often in his company,

  to see your soul by strange and bitter habits

  escaping all his knots and cunning snares;

  and now your soul has been put right by God

  on its true path, and I give heartfelt thanks,

  and lift my hands to Heaven, deeply grateful

  for mercy that attends to human prayers.

  If coming back into the life of love

  you’ve found your path disrupted by deep ditches,

  and by steep hills that make the going hard,

  it’s all to show the hard and thorny path,

  the steep and alpine slant of the ascent,

  by which you can rise up to worth and goodness.

  26

  No ship that ever landed, weather-racked,

  storm-drenched from battling waves, its grateful folk

  kneeling on land to offer thanks, faith-hued,

  could be more glad than I am at this time;

  no one set free from prison, who had felt

  the rope around his neck, could be more happy

  than I to see that fell sword sheathed which had

  made war against my lord for such a spell.

  All you who praise Sir Love with rhyme and craft,

  come celebrate this one who weaves love poems

  but strayed awhile from the path we tread;

  you know there’s more elation up in Heaven

  for rescuing one spirit lost—he’s more

  than nine and ninety who are perfect still.

  27

  Charlemagne’s inheritor, who wears

  his predecessor’s crown upon his brow,

  has taken arms by now to break the horns

  of Babylon, and those who take her name;

  Christ’s Vicar, with his ancient holy burden,

  the keys and mantle, looks to his first nest,

  and if misfortunes don’t come to delay him,

  he’ll see Bologna soon and then great Rome.

  Your lamb, remaining meek and noble both,

  beats back the savage wolves, as it should be

  with those who put asunder lawful loves;

  console her, therefore, she still waits for you,

  as Rome herself does, weeping for her bridegroom;

  and now for Jesus buckle on your sword.

  28

  Oh, blessed and lovely soul, which Heaven waits for,

  you who go dressed in our humanity

  (though not, like others, too much burdened by it):

  so that the road ahead may seem less hard,

  that road by which we pass on to His realm,

  beloved of God, obedient handmaiden,

  behold just now the comfort for your ship,

  already sailing from this bad, blind world

  unto a better port,

  the comfort of this sweet and western wind.

  This wind will lead you, freed from former bonds,

  through shadowed valleys where we all bewail

  our woes and woes of others, taking you

  by best and straightest course

  to that true Orient toward which you’re bound.

  It may be that devout and loving prayers,

  along with sacred tears that mortals shed,

  have had their hearing with the highest Pity;

  or maybe their sheer numbers or their force

  were never needed for eternal Justice

  to keep its course and never swerve aside.

  But that good King who governs in his grace

  in Heaven turns his eyes now toward the place

  where He was crucified;

  and in the breast of this new Charles breathes

  a vengeful spirit that, too long delayed,

  made Europe sigh; and thus He aids his bride,

  He whose voice alone

  fills Babylon with fear and makes it shake.

  All those who dwell between Garonne and Alps,

  between the Rhône and Rhine and the salt sea,

  flock to the banners of high Christian calling;

  and all who ever cared for valor’s meaning

  from Pyrenees on to the far horizon

  will empty Spain to follow Aragon;

  and England, and the islands bathed by ocea
n

  between the Pillars and the starry Bear—

  as far as knowledge reaches

  of muses and their home on Helicon—

  all varied in their languages and dress

  and in their arms, all spurred by love

  to their high undertaking now. What love,

  however worthy or well sanctioned,

  of men and women ever

  gave rise to such a just and lasting anger?

  There is a portion of the world that lies

  always in ice and under freezing snow,

  too distant from the visits of the sun;

  there lives a people, under cloudy days,

  who seem to be the enemies of peace

  and have no sense of fear concerning death.

  If they, now more devout than once they were,

  gird on their swords in their Teutonic rage,

  you’ll see how much

  you need to prize Chaldeans, Arabs, Turks,

  all those who put their trust in pagan gods

  from here on to that sea with bloody waves:

  a people cowardly, undressed, and lazy,

  who fight by archery

  and thereby trust the wind to guide their wars.

  It’s time, therefore, that we withdraw our necks

  out of the ancient yoke, and rend the veil

  that has been wrapped around our eyes;

  display your noble genius, which you get

  from Lord Apollo, whose immortal grace

  informs your eloquence and shows its power

  in both your speech and writing, rightly praised.

  If reading of Amphion and great Orpheus

  no longer makes you marvel,

  you will perhaps be even less impressed

  when Italy and all her sons awake

  and at the sound of your clear summoning

  take up their arms for Jesus; for if she,

  this ancient mother Italy, sees true,

  no other quarrel of hers

  had cause so lovely to compel her service.

  To profit from true treasure you have turned

  the ancient pages over, and the modern,

  soaring toward Heaven, though in earthly body,

  and thus you know how from Mars’ own son’s reign

  on to the time of Emperor Augustus,

  whose brow was three times crowned with laurel green,

  Rome gave her blood unstintingly to help

  when others had been injured; why not now

  be grateful, pious, not

  just generous, and set about the task

  of righting and avenging cruel wrongs

  in company with Mary’s glorious son?

  How then can any enemy have hope

  to stand against us

  if we have Christ among our fighting ranks?

  Consider Xerxes and his reckless daring

  when with peculiar bridges he outraged

  the sea itself, to tread upon our shores,

  and all the Persian women dressed in black