The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  and starting now will not be premature.

  “You know quite well how much substantial sweetness

  your eyes have taken from the sight of her,

  she whom I wish was still

  unborn, in order that we might have peace.

  And you remember, you remember well,

  when her bright image rushed into your heart,

  there where no other flame

  from any other torch could have got in.

  “She set it burning, and if that false flame

  has lasted many years, awaiting still

  a day that, luckily for your salvation,

  will never come, then you can rouse yourself

  to a more sacred hope: gaze at the heavens,

  revolving overhead,

  immortal and adorned; if your desire,

  so happy in its sickness,

  can gloat about a glance, a word, a song,

  what will it feel when it’s fulfilled above?”

  Another thought, both sweet and sour, seated

  securely in my soul, heavy but welcome,

  weighs greatly on my heart,

  mauling it with desire and sweet hope;

  and for the sake of kind and glorious fame

  it does not feel my freezing or my burning

  whether I’m thin or pale;

  I kill it, and it springs right back to life.

  This thought’s been growing in me day by day

  since first they wrapped me in my baby clothes

  and one grave likely will enclose us both;

  for when my soul’s denuded of my limbs

  this lust for glory can’t accompany it.

  If Greek or Latin tongues

  should praise me when I’m dead, that is just wind;

  and since I hate acquiring

  what one brief hour disperses, let me try

  to leave these shadows and embrace the truth.

  But that one passion that so fills me up

  blocks out the others that are born beside it,

  and time runs by again

  and she’s my subject: I forget myself,

  and all the light of those clear, lovely eyes

  which gently melts me with its steady heat

  has hold of me, a rein

  against which I can use no wit or force.

  What good then does it do me to fit out

  my little boat for distant voyaging

  when it’s tied down and jammed between the rocks?

  You, dear my Lord, who free me from the knots

  that bind the world in many different ways,

  You who could liberate me,

  why will You not remove my blush and shame?

  Like someone in a dream

  I see my death approaching, wish to fight,

  but find myself unarmed, devoid of weapons.

  I see what I am doing, I’m not fooled

  by an imperfect knowledge of the truth;

  Love forces me. He makes

  his poor believers leave the path of honor;

  from time to time I feel it, in my heart,

  a fine disdain, severe and growing harsh;

  it rises in my face

  and shows my hidden thoughts to other people.

  To love a mortal thing with that same faith

  that should belong to God alone, is quite

  forbidden if we truly wish for honor.

  This fact, like some loud voice, calls back my reason,

  which wandered off behind my senses, lost;

  but though it hears and thinks

  it should come back, bad habit rules again

  and sets before my eyes

  she who was born, it seems, to make me die

  because she pleased me, and herself, too much.

  And I don’t know what space the heavens had

  in mind for me when I came new to earth

  to join this bitter war

  that I have waged so long against myself;

  nor can I see, because my body veils it,

  how soon the day will come that ends my life;

  but I can see my hair

  changing its color as my passions cool.

  Now that I think my time is getting near

  and my departure cannot be far off,

  like one who’s learned from getting lost, I go

  alert and wary, thinking back to when

  I veered from the right hand and lost the port:

  and partly I feel shame

  and filled with sorrow, think of turning back;

  but on the other hand,

  my pleasure’s an addiction grown so strong

  it wants to bargain and cajole with Death.

  Song, here I am, and carrying a heart

  that’s colder with its fear than frozen snow,

  because I know, beyond all doubt, I’m dying;

  while I have pondered, most of the short thread

  allotted to me has been spooled away;

  no weight was ever greater

  than what I try to shoulder in this state,

  for Death walks at my side

  and while I seek wise counsel for my life,

  I see what’s good but hold fast to the bad.

  265

  A wild and hardened heart, a cruel will,

  housed in a humble and angelic body;

  if this keeps up, this harsh approach of hers,

  she’ll have me as a prize of little honor;

  for when the flowers and the grass and leaves

  are born and die, bright day and then dark night,

  I weep at all such times. I have good cause,

  given my fate, Lord Love, and then my lady.

  I live on hope alone, remembering

  that I have seen how water can, by trying,

  wear away marble and the hardest rock:

  no heart’s so hard that tears and prayers and love

  cannot sometimes rouse pity and affection,

  no will so cold that it cannot be warmed.

  266

  Ah, my dear lord, each thought calls me to see

  you whom I always have before me, though

  my wretched fortune (could it treat me worse?)

  hems me in, spins me, makes me go backward;

  then all the sweet desire Love inspires

  takes me toward death so gradually that I

  do not perceive it; I call on my two lights

  in vain, sigh everywhere, by night and day.

  Devotion to my lord, love for my lady,

  these are the chains I’ve labored to create,

  and it was I, myself, who forged and bound them;

  a laurel, green, a column, nobly born,

  the one for eighteen years, fifteen the other,

  I’ve carried in my breast unstintingly.

  267

  Alas! That lovely face, that gentle gaze.

  Alas! That proud and carefree way of walking!

  And oh, the talk that humbled savage minds

  and made the base-born stand up and be valiant!

  That smile, alas!, that also launched the dart

  that meant my death, the only good I hope for!

  Oh, royal soul, worthy to rule an empire,

  if you had not arrived so recently:

  for you I now must burn, must breathe in you,

  for I am yours alone; and with you taken,

  no other fortune could bereave me so;

  you loaded me with hope and with desire

  when I last saw you, you my living pleasure;

  the wind has carried all your words away.

  268

  What do I do? Can you advise me, Love?

  It’s surely time to die,

  and I’ve already waited much too long.

  My lady’s dead, she took my heart along;

  if I’m to follow it,

  I need to interrupt these awful years,

  because I cannot hope


  to see her on this side, and waiting hurts,

  since every joy I had

  was turned to tears the moment she was gone

  and life on earth holds no more sweetness for me.

  Love, you can feel this bitter, heavy loss,

  so I complain to you;

  I know you’re grieving, taking on my grief,

  or say our grief, for on the selfsame rock

  we’ve wrecked our ships, and in

  one selfsame moment has our sun gone dark.

  What skill could ever put

  my sorry state in words that matched its meaning?

  Oh, world gone blank, you ingrate,

  you have good cause to weep with me today,

  for with her loss you’ve lost what good you held.

  Your glory has collapsed and you don’t see it;

  you were not worthy, either,

  while she was living here, to know her or

  be touched and trodden by her holy feet,

  since something that amazing

  should be adorning Heaven with its presence.

  But I, alas, who have

  no life or self without her love, am left

  to weep and call for her:

  that’s what remains of all the hopes I had,

  and that alone is all that keeps me going.

  Oh, God, it’s now just earth, that lovely face

  that spoke to us of Heaven

  and of the happiness to come, above!

  Invisible, her form’s in Paradise,

  released from that dim veil

  that shadowed here the flower of her years,

  to be reclothed with it

  another time, and never take it off,

  when we see her become

  more beautiful and kindly than before,

  eternal beauty then surpassing mortal.

  More beautiful than ever, and more graceful,

  she comes into my mind

  a place she knows her sight is ever welcome;

  this is one column that supports my life,

  the other her bright name,

  that resonates so sweetly in my heart.

  But recollecting now

  that all my hope is dead, which was alive

  while she was blossoming,

  I am destroyed, as Love well knows, and I

  hope she can see it too, from where she dwells.

  Ladies, who wondered at her beauty and

  her most angelic life,

  and her celestial bearing on this earth:

  grieve for me now, and let your pity fill you

  for me, and not for her,

  since she has peace and I am left at war,

  and if the way to follow

  and be with her should be closed off for long,

  Love holds me back from severing this knot.

  He speaks within me, and he reasons thus:

  “Rein in the giant sorrow that transports you,

  since excess of desire

  will lose that Heaven that your heart so longs for,

  “where she is living, she who now seems dead,

  and smiles to look upon

  her beautiful remains, and sighs for you;

  “and her great fame, she asks

  that you not let it die, but sing it still

  in many places here,

  your tongue and voice still making bright her name

  all for the sake of eyes so dear to you.”

  Flee the clear weather, Song,

  the greenery too; don’t go where there is laughter,

  don’t go where there is singing;

  go where there’s weeping, don’t seek cheerful people,

  disconsolate widow, you are dressed in black.

  269

  The column’s broken, the green laurel’s down,

  that gave some shade to my most weary cares;

  I’ve lost what I can’t hope to find again,

  Boreas to Auster, Indian to Moorish sea.

  Death, you have taken from me double treasure

  that made me glad to live, and walk with pride;

  land cannot replace it, empire even,

  nor Oriental gems and potent gold.

  But since this is the will of destiny,

  what can I have except a soul that’s sad,

  eyes that are wet, a head forever bent?

  Oh, life of ours, apparently so lovely,

  how easily you lose, in just one morning,

  what we spent years and great pains to obtain!

  270

  You seem to show me, Love, that you would like

  to see me slip into the yoke again;

  you’ll need to pass a test,

  novel and strange, if you’d subdue me, then.

  Go find my much-loved treasure in the earth,

  wherever it is hidden from my sight,

  making me poor and wretched,

  and fetch that wise, chaste heart that held my life;

  and if it’s true your power is as great

  as it is said to be, in Heaven and in

  the Abyss (for here among us mortals each

  well-born person feels

  your worth, I think, and your tremendous power),

  take back from Death what she has taken from us

  and raise your standard in that lovely face.

  Put back in her fair eyes the living light

  that was my guide, rekindle the soft flame

  that still, alas, consumes me,

  though it’s been quenched. Didn’t it burn, though?

  You’ll never see a thirsty doe or stag

  seek out a spring or river with such zeal

  as I seek those sweet means

  of so much torment, still; I know myself,

  and know my yearnings, which are huge, and make

  me rave from merely thinking of them, while

  I race down roads that lead nowhere at all

  and with my weary mind

  pursue a thing I never hope to reach.

  Now, when you summon me, I can ignore you,

  you have no power outside your own realm.

  Make me experience that gentle aura

  outside myself, the way I do within,

  for it had power, singing,

  to dissipate both scorn and anger here,

  to clarify a stormy mind and banish

  the massing clouds of darkness and of baseness,

  and it refined my style,

  which rose to heights it can no longer reach.

  Give me some hope that matches my desire,

  and since the soul is stronger in its rights,

  give back to eyes and ears their proper object,

  without which they can’t function:

  they grow imperfect and my life is death.

  Your force is spent on me in vain, you know,

  as long as earth is covering my first love.

  Restore me to that glance that worked like sunshine

  upon the ice that used to weigh me down;

  I’ll meet you at that pass

  through which my heart crossed, never to turn back;

  carry your golden arrows and your bow,

  and let her speak to me the way she did,

  sounding the very words

  from which I learned what love was all about.

  Revive the tongue in which were set the hooks

  that caught me, always, with the very bait

  I never stop desiring; hide your snares

  in blond and curly hair,

  for that’s the thicket where my will is limed;

  spread out her tresses, hand them to the wind,

  for they’re the chains that you can use to bind me.

  No one will free me from that golden snare,

  neglected artfully and thick with ringlets,

  nor from the burning spirit

  that hovered sweetly in her cruel gaze

  and day and night kept my desire gre
en

  greener than any laurel, any myrtle,

  when woods have donned and shed

  their leaves, and meadows their long grass.

  But since Death’s had the pride to boldly shatter

  the knot I never could escape, and since

  you cannot find, wherever you might go,

  someone to tie a second,

  why bother, Love, to flourish all your tricks?

  The season’s past and you have lost the weapons

  that made me shake, so what can you do now?

  Your weapons were those eyes that shot forth arrows

  blazing with unseen fire, arrows that had

  nothing to fear from reason,

  for humans are defenseless against gods;

  the thoughtfulness and silence, smiles and laughter,

  virtuous bearing and expressive speech,

  and words that, understood,

  were capable of making base souls noble,

  the mild and humble but angelic mien

  that won such praise, from this side and from that,

  and then her sitting down and standing up

  that left a man in doubt

  which one deserved more admiration:

  these were the arms you used to conquer hearts,

  and now you are disarmed, and I am safe.

  These souls the heavens send to your domain,

  you bind them this way, now, and, then, that way,

  but me you’ve bound in just

  one knot, because the heavens willed it so.

  That knot is cut, but freedom doesn’t please me;

  instead I weep and cry: “Oh, noble pilgrim,

  what heavenly decree

  first bound me up and first gave you release?

  “God, who removed you early from our world,

  showed us exalted virtue of your sort

  only to stir and heat up our desire.”

  Love god, I do not fear

  new wounds from you, or new hurt at your hands;

  you bend your bow in vain, your shots go wild;

  your power melted when her eyes were closed.

  Death has released me, Love, from all your laws;

  the one who was my lady is in Heaven,

  leaving my life both sorrow-filled and free.

  271

  That burning knot which, hour after hour,

  kept me tied up for twenty-one long years

  has been untied by Death; never such sorrow,

  and now I know I can’t be killed by grief.

  Not wishing to lose power yet, Sir Love

  had set another snare among the grasses

  and with new tinder lit another fire,

  making it hard for me to get away.

  And if I hadn’t learned so much before

  from my experience, I’d have been his prey

  and burned the hotter, being drier wood.

  But Death, against whom wit and strength are helpless,

  has given me my freedom, since she has

  shattered that knot and scattered all the fire.