The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

of what you are from seeing my response.

  If you could know as we

  who gaze at it, the beauty that I speak of,

  so goddesslike, incredible, divine,

  your measurement of joy

  would vanish from your heart; therefore, perhaps

  your vigor is protected from your beauty.

  Happy the soul who sighs for you, however,

  you heavenly lights to which I owe my life

  since nothing else affords me earthly joy.

  Alas, why am I seldom

  rewarded with what never satisfies me?

  Why not more often notice

  how Love of you is tearing me to pieces,

  and why remove so suddenly the good

  that helps my soul survive its awful times?

  I say that now and then,

  thanks to your aid I feel within my soul

  a strange new sweetness, unaccustomed,

  and one that takes away

  all other burdens of depressing thoughts,

  trading a thousand thoughts for one alone.

  This little bit of life restores my joy,

  it’s all I need, and if I could sustain it,

  there’d be no state on earth to equal mine.

  But such an honor might

  make others envious, swell me up with pride;

  therefore, alas, it’s needful

  to limit laughter with a bout of weeping

  and interrupt those flaming thoughts to bring

  me to my senses, back to myself again.

  The amorous disposition

  that dwells within you shows itself to me

  and draws all other joys out of my heart;

  and that’s when words and deeds

  come forth from me and help inspire hope

  that, though flesh die, I may become immortal.

  When you appear, my grief and anguish flee,

  and when you leave, they come right back again;

  my memory, however, still infused

  with love, can bar the door,

  and they can’t penetrate beyond my skin.

  Thus if I bear good fruit

  of any kind, the seed comes first from you;

  I am dry land that you can till and cultivate,

  and if some good results, the praise is yours.

  Song, you don’t calm me down, but rather

  you kindle me to say what steals my self:

  be sure then that you’ll not exist alone.

  72

  Gentle my lady, I can see

  a sweet light in the movement of your eyes

  that points the way by which I might reach Heaven;

  and, as it always does,

  within, where I sit down alone with Love,

  your heart is shining almost visibly.

  This is the sight that moves me to do good

  and guides me forward toward a glorious goal;

  this separates me from the vulgar crowd.

  No human tongue could hope

  to indicate what those two holy lights

  can make me feel,

  both when the winter scatters frost around

  and later, when the year grows young again,

  as in the time when I first learned desire.

  I think: “If up above,

  where the eternal mover of the stars

  shows forth his handiwork to us on earth,

  there’s something else this fair,

  unlock the doors of this my prison here

  which bars me from the path to such a life!”

  Then I revert to my recurrent war,

  with thanks to Nature and my day of birth

  which destined me for so much precious good,

  and she who raised my heart

  by filling it with hope (for up to then

  I was a burden to myself,

  but since, I have been pleasing even me),

  filling my heart with thought so high and gracious,

  the heart whose key those lovely eyes possess.

  A state so joyous, neither

  Love nor turning Fortune ever gave

  to gratify their friends in this wide world;

  I would not trade them for

  one glance from eyes that nourish my repose

  the way a tree grows upward from its roots.

  Lovely angelic sparks that bless my life,

  that kindle and ignite the bliss which burns,

  sweetly consuming me: while other lights

  will fade and then go out,

  yours grows more bright and clear with time; it shines

  and then, down in my heart,

  such sweetness rains that every other thing

  and every other thought is left behind,

  and nothing’s there except yourself and Love.

  No matter how much sweetness

  existed in the hearts of lucky lovers

  and managed to be stored up in one place,

  it simply won’t compare

  to what I feel at those rare times when you

  direct toward me the black and white of Love;

  and I believe that from my infancy,

  my swaddling clothes and crib, this remedy

  was sent by Heaven to redress my faults and ills.

  Your veil, then, does me wrong,

  so does your hand, when either comes between

  your eyes and my delight,

  and thus by day and night, to ease my breast,

  my giant passion spills itself around,

  taking its cue from your retiring face.

  Because, distressed, I see,

  that Nature’s gifts to me aren’t worth a thing,

  don’t make me worthy of so dear a glance,

  I force myself to be

  someone who may be worthy of high hope

  and of the noble fire in which I burn.

  Then if through toil I can make myself

  quick to do good and slow to do the opposite,

  disliking all the things the world desires,

  perhaps the reputation

  could help me to a kind and lenient judgment;

  the end of all my weeping,

  my sad heart knows, will come from nowhere else,

  will come from lovely eyes, trembling at last,

  the final goal of every courteous lover.

  Song, your sister has gone on ahead;

  I feel another coming from your home,

  and to that end I’m going to rule more paper.

  73

  Since it’s my destiny

  that burning passion forces me to speak

  just as it always forces me to sigh,

  Love, you who rouse me to it,

  please be my guide and help me find the path

  and harmonize my rhymes with my desire;

  but not so much as to untune my heart

  with too much sweetness, as I fear it might be

  from what I feel where others’ eyes can’t reach;

  speech kindles me and spurs me,

  nor do I find, as used to be the case,

  my wit will quench the fire

  that rages in my mind (for which I fear

  and tremble); I melt to hear the sound

  of my own words, a man of ice in sun.

  At first I thought I’d find

  through speech some respite for my hot

  desire, some truce or armistice;

  this hope emboldened me

  to discourse of my feelings; now, however,

  it leaves me, in my need, and quite dissolves.

  But I must still pursue my undertaking,

  continuing to sound my notes of love,

  so potent is the will that drives me forward;

  reason is dead and gone,

  who used to hold the reins but couldn’t manage.

  Let Love at least instruct me

  what I should say, how I might sing so that

  if it should strike the
ear of my sweet foe,

  she might befriend, not me perhaps, but pity.

  I say: “While in those days

  when men went out pursuing greater honor

  their industry betook them many places,

  to far-off lands, across

  the hills and seas, seeking for honored things,

  hoping to pluck the rarest flowers of virtue,

  I find that Nature, God, and Fortune

  have worked to put all virtues in one place,

  those holy lights that give my life its meaning,

  which means I need not travel,

  passing across this country or that shore,

  because I come back always

  to lights that are the fountain of my life,

  and if I start to gravitate toward death,

  it is their sight that brings me back to health.”

  As in the tearing winds

  the weary helmsman lifts his head at night

  to those two lights that always mark the pole;

  so in this tempest I endure,

  this storm of love, that pair of shining eyes

  become my constellation and my comfort.

  Alas, but most of what I get I steal

  now here, now there, as Love incites me to,

  rather than any sort of gracious gift;

  the little worth I have

  I take from them as my perpetual norm;

  since first I saw them I’ve

  not gone one step toward good without their help;

  I’ve made them stand upon my very summit,

  for on my own I have no sense of worth.

  I never could imagine,

  much less elucidate, the full effects

  those soft eyes have upon this heart of mine;

  all other life-delights

  pale in comparison for me, I know,

  and every other beauty comes behind.

  A tranquil peace, one free from any pain,

  like that which is in Heaven, for eternity,

  comes forth from them and from their lovely smile;

  if I could see, see steadily,

  how Love so sweetly manages their life,

  for just one day, up close,

  with not one turn of a supernal sphere,

  nor be distracted by myself or others,

  or even by the blinking of my eyes!

  Alas, I go on wanting

  that which can’t be, by any means or way,

  and I live on desire, well past hope.

  If that one knot could be

  untied, the one that Love has bound my tongue with

  when too much light has overcome my sight,

  if it were loosened, I’d be bold to speak

  words that might have such a strong effect

  that everyone who listened to them wept.

  But my deep wounds, by their

  intensity, distract my injured heart

  and I grow pale and wan,

  and my blood hides away, I know not where,

  and I am not myself; it seems to me

  this is the blow that Love has killed me with.

  Song, my pen has surely gotten weary

  from all this sweet conversing with you here,

  although my thoughts continue talking to me.

  74

  I’m weary now of thinking how my thoughts

  of you are always weariless, and how

  I have not yet abandoned life to flee

  from this great burden of depressing sighs;

  and how I’m always going on about

  your face, your hair, your penetrating eyes,

  and how my tongue and voice are never tired

  of sounding out your name by night and day;

  and how it is my feet are not worn out,

  from following your footsteps everywhere,

  a waste of time and energy for sure;

  and asking where the ink comes from, the pages

  I fill with words of you (if I offend,

  the blame is Love’s, not a defect of art).

  75

  Those lovely eyes that hurt me are the only

  things that could heal the wound they’ve made; but not

  the power of herbs, nor any magic art,

  nor healing stone from far beyond our sea;

  they’ve cut me off from any other love

  and only one sweet thought can soothe my soul,

  and if that’s all my tongue can talk about,

  then mock the escort, do not blame the tongue.

  These are those lovely eyes that made my lord’s

  exploits victorious on every side,

  and most especially upon my flank;

  these are the lovely eyes whose burning sparks

  shine always in my heart, which helps explain

  why I do not grow tired praising them.

  76

  Love took me in with all his promises,

  coaxing me back into my former prison,

  then handed all the keys to her, my enemy,

  who always keeps me banished from myself.

  I wasn’t quite aware of what was happening

  till I was in their power; now, distressed

  (who will believe this even if I swear it?),

  I have regained my liberty, though sighing;

  and like true prisoners, who go on suffering,

  I wear my chains, or most of them; my heart

  is plainly written in my eyes and forehead.

  You’ll say, as soon as you perceive my color,

  “If I have any judgment in these matters

  this man was just a little way from death.”

  77

  A thousand years could Polyclitus study,

  along with others famous in his art,

  and never glimpse a fraction of the beauty

  that has made such a conquest of my heart.

  But certainly my Simon was in Heaven,

  the place from which this noble lady comes;

  he saw her there, he captured her on paper,

  to show her lovely face down here on earth.

  This work could only be imagined there

  in such a place as Heaven, not with us,

  here where the body always veils the soul;

  a noble act, and he could not have done it

  after he got back here, to heat and cold,

  and saw the world once more with mortal eyes.

  78

  When Simon came upon that high conceit

  and took his pencil up on my behalf,

  had he been able to grant voice and mind

  as well as form to that amazing image,

  he might have saved my breast from many sighs

  that make what others love feel base to me.

  For in her picture here she looks quite modest

  and her expression seems to promise peace;

  when I address her, then, to make my case,

  she seems to listen with a willing air,

  if only she could answer to my words!

  Pygmalion, you should celebrate your statue,

  since you received, maybe a thousand times,

  what I desire to have just even once!

  79

  My fourteenth year of sighs: if its beginning

  is any forecast of its end and middle,

  no breeze or cooler spell can rescue me,

  as my desire seems to burn and grow.

  Love, who is never absent from my thoughts,

  under whose yoke I never can breathe easy,

  renders me less than half of what I should be,

  turning my eyes once more toward what destroys them.

  And thus I go on day by day; I weaken,

  and no one knows about it except me

  and she whose simplest glance can melt my heart;

  I’ve coaxed my soul to come along this far,

  and it can’t go much further on, I think,

  since death’s app
roaching and life runs away.

  80

  He who decides to entrust his life

  to treacherous waves and close to the rocks,

  preserved from death just by a little boat,

  cannot be very far from his own end;

  he ought then to turn back to find the port

  now while the tiller still governs the sail.

  The gentle breeze to which I trusted sail

  and tiller, embarked on an amorous life

  and hoping to come to a better port,

  has steered me up against a thousand rocks,

  and I carried the cause of my woeful end

  not just around me but right in the boat.

  Closed in for a long spell in this blind boat,

  I drifted on and did not watch the sail

  that carried me off to a premature end,

  but it pleased Him then, who had given me life,

  to summon me back, away from the rocks,

  and let me glimpse it far away: the port.

  As in the night a light in some far port

  is seen way out at sea by ship or boat

  unless it is obscured by storm or rocks,

  so I could glimpse, beyond the swollen sail,

  ensigns and banners of some other life

  that made me sigh, desiring my own end.

  It’s not that I am certain of that end,

  for while I’d like, come dawn, to reach that port

  the journey’s long within so short a life;

  and I’m afraid, when viewing this frail boat,

  and see that it’s too full of wind, my sail,

  a wind that’s driving me on toward the rocks.

  May I escape alive from doubtful rocks

  and may my exile come to a good end;

  how happy I’d be then to furl the sail

  and cast my anchor in a friendly port!

  But I am burning in a blazing boat,

  finding it hard to leave my former life.

  Lord of my end, Lord of my very life,

  before I split my boat upon the rocks

  guide safely to the port my tattered sail.

  81

  I am so weary from my ancient bundle,

  the sins I lug, and all my evil habits,

  I fear I’ll lose my way and fall at last

  into my mortal foe’s most potent grasp.

  It’s true, a great friend came to free me once;

  His was the highest and most gracious courtesy;

  and then He flew away, out of my sight,

  and I have tried in vain to find and see Him.

  But His voice echoes still, down in this world:

  “Oh, you who labor, here’s the way for you;

  come to me now unless the pass is blocked.”

  What grace, what love, oh, what high destiny,

  will give me wings and make me like a dove,

  so I can rest and rise up from the earth?

  82

  I do not tire, Lady, of my love,

  nor will I ever, long as I shall live;