The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  272

  Life runs on by and does not pause an hour,

  and Death comes following with giant strides;

  and past and present things make war on me,

  and future things assault me here as well;

  both memory and anticipation sit

  upon my heart, now one side, now the other;

  unless I can take pity on myself

  I’ll soon be free of any thoughts at all.

  The times my sad heart knew a little sweetness

  all come back to me now; at the same time,

  I watch the storm clouds massing for my voyage:

  the squall has reached the harbor, and my helmsman

  lies down exhausted, masts and rigging shattered,

  the lovely stars I steered by all extinguished.

  273

  What are you doing? Thinking? Why look still

  backward to times that can return no more?

  Desolate soul, why are you throwing wood

  onto the very fire that’s burning you?

  Those tender words and those enchanting glances

  that you’ve described and pictured, one by one,

  have left the earth behind, and you well know

  it’s late, and foolish, to expect them here.

  Oh, don’t renew this deadly enterprise,

  don’t follow these deceptive, longing thoughts;

  find one that’s sure and certain, a good end;

  come search for Heaven; nothing pleases here,

  since beauty made us ill while it was living

  and being dead it robs us of our peace.

  274

  Give me my peace, oh, all you cruel thoughts!

  It’s not enough that Love and Death and Fortune

  besiege my fortress and attack my gates?

  I have to have some inside foes as well?

  And you, my heart, are you still what you were?

  Traitor to me and me alone, you shelter

  spies in our midst and you make pacts with those

  who are my enemies, so swift and deadly.

  Through you Love sends his secret messages,

  Fortune holds court and revels in her pomp,

  and Death preserves the memory of that blow

  that will break up whatever’s left of me;

  in you my vagrant thoughts are armed with error:

  I blame you, therefore, for my every ill.

  275

  My eyes, our sun’s gone dark; or rather say

  it has climbed up to Heaven, where it shines

  and waits for our arrival there and mourns,

  and wonders why there should be a delay.

  My ears, angelic words are sounding there

  where listeners exist who understand them.

  My feet, your range won’t take you to the place

  where she is lodged, who used to make you move.

  Why therefore do you all make war against me?

  I’m not the reason you can’t see her, hear her,

  or find her living anywhere on earth.

  You can blame Death; or you can praise the One

  who binds and frees, opens and shuts at once,

  and after grieving brings us into joy.

  276

  Because the bright, angelic sight of her

  has, by abruptly passing, plunged my soul

  into deep sorrow and the darkest horror,

  I try to ease my grief a bit by speaking.

  I surely have some right to lamentation

  (as she well knows, and Love is quite aware)

  because my heart had just a single balm

  against the sorrow that this life contains;

  and this one remedy you’ve stolen, Death.

  And you, you happy earth, you get to have

  that lovely face, and cover it and guard it:

  and where does that leave me, blind and despairing,

  because the soft and sweet and loving light

  that filled my eyes is now no longer with me?

  277

  If Love does not come up with some new counsel

  I’m going to trade my life for something else

  because such fear and sorrow load my soul:

  desire thrives, despite the death of hope,

  and I am filled with restlessness and terror

  and all my life, by day and night, is tears,

  exhausted, rudderless in stormy seas,

  a dangerous journey, and without an escort.

  I must invent a guide because the true one

  is in the earth; no, she’s in Heaven, where

  she shines the brighter: only to my heart,

  not to my eyes, robbed of the light they need

  by this dark veil of sorrow and lament

  that makes my hair turn white before its time.

  278

  In the age of her lovely flowering,

  when Love is apt to have his greatest sway,

  she left her earthly vesture in the earth

  and took her leave, departing, my life’s aura,

  and rose to Heaven, living, nude, and lovely;

  from there she rules me and she drains my strength.

  Oh, why can’t I be rid of mortal things,

  live my last day, first of a life to come,

  so that my soul can follow her, as free

  and light and glad as are my rising thoughts,

  and let me put all these old woes behind me?

  All this delay is nothing but dead loss

  that makes me just a burden to myself.

  How good to die, three years ago today!

  279

  If I hear birds lamenting, or green leaves

  that summer breeze is stirring very softly,

  or the faint murmur of the lucid waters

  that run along beside a flowery bank

  where I am sitting, lost in thought and writing,

  I see her, then, whom Heaven reveals, earth hides,

  I see her and I hear and understand her,

  as from afar she answers to my sighing:

  “Why do you waste yourself before your time?”

  she asks me, full of pity. “Why pour out

  this river of affliction from your eyes?

  “Don’t weep for me, for dying made my day

  an endless one, and when I closed my eyes

  I opened them to one great inner light.”

  280

  I’ve never been where I could see more clearly

  the vision that I sought and never found,

  or where I felt such freedom, calling out,

  my love-cries rising to the skies above;

  I know no other valley that contains

  so many nooks and caves where one can sigh;

  I don’t think Love has had such charming nests

  on Cyprus or on any other shore.

  The waters talk of love, the breeze, the branches;

  the little birds and fish, the flowers, the grass,

  all beg me always to remain in love.

  But you, born lucky, call to me from Heaven,

  and by the memory of your death you urge me

  to scorn this world and all of its sweet hooks.

  281

  How many times, in flight and seeking refuge,

  from others and myself, have I come here

  into this sweet retreat, bathing the grass

  with tears, of course, disrupting the air with sighs!

  How many times, alone and full of fear,

  have I sought out the shadowy dark places,

  seeking in thought to find the high delight,

  that Death has snatched, calling, “Death take me too!”

  Now I have seen her, in the form of nymph

  or other goddess, rising from the bed

  of this, the river Sorgue, here on its bank

  and treading its fresh grass, I swear, as if

  she were a living woman, and her f
ace

  has shown me that she’s truly sorry for me.

  282

  You soul in bliss, who often come to me

  and comfort these afflicted nights of mine

  with your bright eyes, which death has not extinguished

  but made more beautiful than mortal eyes:

  how I rejoice that you should choose to gladden

  these times that are so sad, with your true sight!

  Thus I begin to find your beauties present

  in all those places where they used to live.

  Where I went singing of you, years and years.

  Now, as you see, I wander, full of weeping—

  not tears for you but tears for my great loss.

  I find but one repose in all this anguish,

  and that’s the fact that you return; I know you;

  I know you by your walk, voice, face, and dress.

  283

  Oh, Death, you have stained the loveliest face

  and quenched the most beautiful eyes ever seen;

  you’ve loosed the brightest spirit, virtue-filled,

  from the amazing body-knot that held it.

  In one quick moment you have seized my wealth,

  silenced the gentlest accents ever heard,

  and filled me with such lamentations that

  the things I see and hear are painful to me.

  My lady does indeed come back, from pity,

  to soothe my sorrow and its great excess;

  I find no other solace in this life;

  if I described the way she speaks and shines

  I would inflame all hearts with love—indeed,

  not men alone: the hearts of bears and tigers.

  284

  The time so short, the thought so swift that brings

  my lady back to me—despite her death,

  my sorrow’s remedy is close at hand:

  for while I see her nothing does me harm.

  Love, who has tied me to a cross in torment,

  quails when he sees her at my soul’s shut gate,

  the place whereat she kills me still, because

  her sight’s so sweet, her voice is truly gentle.

  She’s like a lady coming home again,

  and with her bright brow driving out the dark

  that filled my heart with sad and heavy thoughts;

  and soul, who can’t bear seeing such strong light,

  sighs deeply, saying, “Oh, the blessed hours,

  that day when your eyes opened this bright path!”

  285

  Never did tender mother her dear son,

  or loving wife her much-beloved spouse,

  with many sighs and great anxiety,

  offer such heartfelt counsel in a crisis

  as she gives me, who sees my heavy exile,

  and from on high, from her eternal home,

  revisits me with all her old affection,

  her forehead creased with double obligation,

  a mother’s and a lover’s. She shows fear,

  and she shows fiery virtue, and she tells me

  what to avoid and what I should pursue,

  and tells the story of our lives, and urges

  me not to tarry lifting up my soul.

  And while she speaks I feel at peace—a truce.

  286

  Could I portray the gentle breeze of sighs

  I hear from her who was my lady once

  (she’s now in Heaven, but she seems to me

  to live and walk and feel and love and breathe),

  oh, what hot thoughts her portrait might arouse

  as I spoke out, so loving and so kind

  is her demeanor toward me when she visits,

  for fear I’ll miss the way, backslide, or stray.

  She tutors me to go straight on, and I,

  who know her chaste allurements and just prayers,

  with their sweet murmur, low and full of pity,

  must learn to bend myself to her calm will

  as I soak up the sweetness of her words,

  which have the power to make a stone shed tears.

  287

  Though you have left me, my Sennuccio,

  alone and grieving here, I take some comfort

  that you have fled the body where you were

  a prisoner and a corpse, and flown away.

  Now you can see the poles together, see

  the wandering stars and all their twisting journeys,

  and you can see how poor our seeing is,

  and I can ease my woe with your new joy.

  I ask you to salute, in the third sphere,

  Dante and Master Cino and Guittone,

  and Franceschino and the rest of them.

  Say to my lady how I live here weeping

  and turn into a beast, lost in the woods,

  remembering her face and holy deeds.

  288

  I’ve filled the whole surrounding air with sighs,

  watching from these harsh hills the gentle plain

  where she was born, who held my heart in hand,

  there as she budded, there as she bore fruit,

  then went to Heaven, leaving me behind

  and so distraught from her quick parting that

  my weary eyes, that seek her far, in vain,

  leave nothing dry in their vicinity.

  In all these hills there’s not a shrub or stone,

  nor branch nor green leaf living on these slopes,

  nor flower in the dale, nor blade of grass,

  nor thread of water trickling from these springs,

  nor savage forest beast, that doesn’t know

  about my sorrow and its bitterness.

  289

  Flame of my soul, lovely beyond all beauty,

  whom Heaven greatly favored while on earth:

  she’s gone too early, turning toward her home,

  and toward her star, most worthy of her presence.

  I start to waken now, and I can see

  that it was for the best she put me off

  and quenched my burning juvenile desires,

  turning toward me a face both sweet and angry.

  I thank her now, grateful for her high counsel,

  the way she used her gentle face and anger,

  proposing my salvation, as I burned.

  Oh, graceful arts and their condign effects:

  one of us worked with words, the other glances:

  I to her greater glory, she my virtue.

  290

  How this world goes! For what upset me once,

  I’m pleased and grateful now; I understand

  that I was tortured to procure salvation

  and my short war was for eternal peace.

  Oh, hope, and oh, desire, always false,

  a hundred times more so for this world’s lovers!

  How much worse off we’d be if she’d consented

  who now lies in the earth and lives in Heaven!

  But blinded Love, along with my deaf mind,

  led me so far astray that by their force

  I took myself into the realms of Death;

  and blessed be she who turned my course around,

  and sent me toward a better shore, and curbed

  my wicked will so that I might not perish!

  291

  When I see dawn descending from the sky

  with rose complexion and with golden hair,

  love overcomes me and I lose my color,

  and sigh and say: “Oh, there is Laura, now.

  “Happy Tithonus, you can know the hour

  when you will get your blessed treasure back;

  but what am I to do about my laurel?

  For if I wish to see her, I must die.

  “Your partings aren’t so hard, since she comes back,

  returning to you every night, and not

  repelled, apparently, by your white hair;

  “my nights are desolate, and my d
ays dark

  because the one who took away my thoughts

  has left me holding nothing but her name.”

  292

  Those eyes I spoke about so heatedly,

  the arms, the hands, the feet, and, yes, the face

  that had estranged me from my very self

  and made me different from other people,

  those curling locks of purest shining gold,

  the lightning loosed by that angelic smile

  that used to turn this earth into a paradise,

  are all turned back to dust, aware of nothing.

  And still I live, which makes me sad and angry,

  abandoned by the light I loved so much,

  lost in a storm, on a dismasted ship.

  So let my love song have an end here now;

  the vein of my accustomed wit is dry,

  and all my lyre can produce is sobs.

  293

  If I had known that sighs turned into rhyme

  would have effects so pleasing to the ear,

  I would have taken early sighs in hand,

  made them more frequent, polished up their style.

  Now that she’s dead, who moved me to speak out

  and stood there at the summit of my thought,

  I can’t, not having any file so sweet,

  turn harsh, dark rhymes to bright and graceful notes.

  I’m certain that my purpose at the time

  was venting my emotions in some fashion,

  easing my heart, not trying to gain fame.

  I simply wept, I didn’t weep for honor;

  now I would like to please, but that high being

  calls me to join her and I’m tired, silent.

  294

  She sojourned in my heart, alive and fair,

  like some high lady staying in a cottage;

  now I’ve become, because she’s passed away,

  mortal indeed, and dead, while she’s a goddess.

  My soul, ransacked and stripped of all its wealth,

  and Love, denuded, having lost his torch,

  ought to rouse pity that would crack a stone,

  but no one’s here to tell or write their sorrow,

  because they weep within, and every ear

  is deaf but mine, and I am in such pain

  that I am left with nothing but these sighs.

  Undoubtedly, we’re merely dust and shadow;

  undoubtedly, desire is blind and greedy;

  undoubtedly, our fond hopes will deceive us.

  295

  My thoughts would once chat softly to themselves

  and talk about their object in this way:

  “Soon she’ll feel pity, wish she hadn’t waited;

  she’s thinking of us now, in hope or fear.”

  Because the final day and fatal hour

  have robbed her of the life she had among us,

  she sees and hears and feels our state from Heaven:

  no other hope of her is left to us.