The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  and I am left alone here, naked, blind.

  I hope just one thing in this misery:

  that she who can see all my thoughts quite plainly

  will win me grace and let me join her there.

  349

  I seem to hear, each hour, in my ear

  the messenger my lady sends to call me,

  and thus it is I’ve changed, inside and out,

  and in a few years I have shrunk so much

  that I can hardly recognize myself:

  all my accustomed life has now been banished.

  To know the day precisely would be good,

  but certainly it cannot be far off.

  Oh, happy day when I escape at last

  this earthly prison, leaving wrecked and scattered

  the frail yet heavy garment that I wear,

  and put behind me all these thick, dark shadows

  and fly so far into the clear, bright sky

  that I may see my Lord and see my lady!

  350

  This frail and brittle goodness that we cherish,

  made out of wind and shadows, known as beauty,

  never existed wholly in one body

  except just once, in our time, to my sorrow;

  for Nature does not wish, nor is it fitting,

  to make one rich and leave the other poor;

  and yet she poured all riches into one

  (excuse me, if you’re beautiful, or think so).

  There never was such beauty, old or new,

  nor will there ever be again, I think;

  yet it was hidden, and the world ignored it.

  She vanished soon, and so I’m glad to trade

  the sight I briefly had of her with Heaven,

  if I may be more pleasing in her sight.

  351

  A toughness that was sweet, and calm rejections,

  full of chaste love and sympathetic pity,

  and charming anger that I now can see

  acted to check my vain and burning passions,

  a well-bred speaking through which always shone

  the highest forms of courtesy and chasteness,

  virtue in blossom, fountainhead of beauty,

  that rooted all the base thoughts from my heart,

  a gaze divine enough to make man blest,

  now fierce, to rein my daring mind from thoughts

  of passions that have rightly been forbidden,

  now swift, to offer comfort to my sorrow:

  this lovely alteration was the root

  of my salvation, else I had been lost.

  352

  Oh, happy spirit that so sweetly governed

  those eyes which blazed far brighter than the sun,

  and formed the sighs, and all the lovely words

  that echo still within my memory:

  I saw you once, aglow with virtue’s fire,

  walking among the grass and violets,

  more as an angel than a lady might;

  those feet will walk within my mind forever.

  The body that you then, joining your Maker,

  left in the earth, was cloaked with that soft veil

  allotted to you by high destiny.

  And your departure meant that Love and Courtesy

  had vanished too; the sun fell from the sky;

  and that was when Death started to taste sweet.

  353

  Wandering bird that can continue singing

  while weeping for the past, and bear sweet witness

  to night, to winter all around you, to

  the happy months that you have left behind:

  if in addition to your own sad griefs

  you knew of my condition, like to yours,

  you probably would fly straight to my bosom

  to share its sorrows and its many groans.

  I do not know if we’d be just alike,

  since she you weep for may be still alive,

  while Death and Heaven have been stingy to me;

  but both this hour, and this forbidding season,

  with memories of sweet and bitter years,

  invite me to converse with you in pity.

  354

  Ah, reach your hand out to my weary mind,

  Lord Love, and to my fragile, tired style,

  and help me speak of her who is immortal

  and now a citizen of Heaven’s realm;

  allow, my lord, my words to reach their goal,

  true praise of her—they can’t soar on their own,

  because that kind of virtue and that beauty

  were never in this world, which was unworthy.

  He answers me: “All Heaven can do, or I,

  along with wise advice and chaste existence,

  all this was in her whom Death took from us;

  there hasn’t been a form to equal hers

  since Adam’s eyes first opened; that’s the truth:

  in tears I say it and in tears you write it.”

  355

  Oh, time, oh, fickle heavens, wheeling past,

  that leave us mortals miserable and blind;

  oh, days that are more swift than wind or arrows!

  Now I have learned to comprehend your frauds.

  But I excuse you, and reproach myself;

  for Nature gave you wings, and gave me eyes,

  which I then used to gaze on things that hurt me,

  and made myself ashamed and full of sorrow;

  and it is time, and even well past time,

  to turn them in a sensible direction,

  and put an end to all my endless woes.

  It’s not Love’s yoke my soul is casting off,

  it’s all my faults, and he knows with what effort;

  virtue comes not from luck; it is an art.

  356

  My sacred aura breathes so often, in

  my weary sleeping, that it makes me bold

  to tell her all the ills I’ve felt, and feel,

  something I could not dare were she alive.

  I tell of that first love-inspiring glance

  that was the start of such a lengthy torment,

  and then I speak of being sad and happy

  as every day and hour Love gnawed at me.

  She’s silent, but her face is grave with pity;

  she looks at me intently, and she sighs,

  and sometimes tears run down her virtuous face;

  and then my soul is overcome with sorrow,

  and weeps, and brims with anger at itself,

  which shakes it out of sleep, back to my day.

  357

  Each day seems longer than a thousand years

  until I follow my dear, faithful guide

  who led me in this world and leads me now

  along a better path to carefree life;

  and now the world’s deceits can’t hold me back

  because I know them well, and so much light

  shines in my heart, come all the way from Heaven,

  that I can reckon both my time and losses.

  Nor do I fear the threatening of death,

  since my King suffered worse, to help me be

  both strong and firm in following Him home,

  and death invaded, a short time ago,

  each vein of hers, who was my destiny,

  yet did not trouble her clear face or brow.

  358

  Death has no way to make her sweet face bitter,

  though her sweet face can sweeten Death itself;

  why would I need another guide to help?

  She is the one who teaches me all goodness,

  and He who was not sparing with his blood,

  who kicked apart the deep Tartarean gates,

  and from His death, I find, I take new strength.

  Come, therefore, Death, you are most dear to me,

  and don’t delay; the time is surely ripe,

  and has been so, from that first moment when

 
my true madonna parted from this life.

  I haven’t really lived a day since then;

  I lived in her, with her I reached the end,

  my day was done when she took her last steps.

  359

  My soft and gentle comforter arrives

  to bring repose to this, my weary life,

  and when she comes, sits on the bed’s left side,

  conversing in that sweet and skillful way;

  all pale with fear and anguish, I inquire,

  “Where do you come from, oh, contented soul?”

  She draws a palm branch, then

  another one of laurel, from her bosom,

  and says: “From the serene

  and cloudless empyrean, holy Heaven,

  I come, and I come only to console you.”

  I thank her humbly with my words and gestures

  and then I ask her softly how it is

  she knows about the state I’m in, and she:

  “The waves of tears that never seem to stop,

  joined with the breeze created by your sighs,

  travel to Heaven to disturb my peace.

  Does it displease you so

  that I have left this misery behind,

  and found a better life?

  It ought to please you if you loved me then

  the way you showed by all your words and looks.”

  I answer, “I don’t weep for anything

  except myself, left here in pain and darkness,

  for I have been as certain you’re in Heaven

  as one can be of something close at hand.

  How could both God and Nature have created

  a youthful heart with so much virtue if

  Heaven and your salvation

  were not intended to reward your deeds?

  You’re one of those rare souls

  who live unblemished in our midst and then

  mount instantly to Heaven when life ends.

  “What else is there for me to do but weep,

  both wretched and alone, nothing without you!

  I wish I could have perished in the cradle

  in order to avoid love’s temperings.”

  And she: “Why weep and so distemper who you are?

  Much better if you tried to spread your wings

  and cast off mortal things

  and ceased your sweet, vain, elevated chatter,

  to make a just account

  and follow me (since you are so devoted),

  to gather, at the end, one of these branches.”

  “I meant to ask about that,” I then answer,

  “just what it is those leaves and branches mean.”

  And she: “Why, you can see that for yourself,

  since you have honored one of them by writing.

  “The palm is victory and says that I

  conquered the world and overcame myself;

  the laurel stands for triumph,

  of which I’m worthy through the strength of God.

  Now you, if you’re beset,

  return to Him and ask Him for His help

  so we may be united when you die.”

  “Is this the same blond hair and golden knot

  that bound me then,” I ask, “and those same eyes

  that were my sun?” “Don’t run around with fools,

  or talk and think the way they do,” she says.

  “I am a naked spirit and rejoice

  in Heaven; what you sought is dust, long since.

  To help you in your troubles

  I am allowed to seem the way I was

  and shall seem so again,

  more lovely and more loving to you too

  who once was harsh for your sake and my own.”

  I weep, and with her hands

  she dries my face, and then she sighs so sweetly,

  and scolds me gently too,

  with words that could have broken stones apart;

  and then she leaves, and then my sleep does too.

  360

  I make my plaint before the queen who rules

  that part of us that can be called divine

  and sits upon its summit;

  and call my sweet, cruel master to account,

  the ancient one; like gold refined in fire,

  surrounded by my horror, fear, and pain,

  like one in fear of death

  who comes before a court to beg for justice.

  Thus I begin: “Lady, when I was young

  I set my left foot squarely in his kingdom;

  much pain and anger followed,

  and I have suffered such peculiar torments,

  so many and so strange,

  that finally my patience has been lost

  and I have come at last to hate my life.

  “Thus all my time till now has been consumed

  by fire and pain; how many useful paths

  of virtue I disdained,

  how many joys, to follow this cruel tempter!

  I haven’t words or genius to describe

  the sheer unhappiness he’s put me through,

  or utter my complaints

  about the grave injustice of this ingrate.

  “So little honey, so much vinegar,

  aloes, and bitterness, brought to fill my life,

  his sweetness proving false,

  that drew me to the flock of bleating lovers!

  For if I’m not deceived,

  I had a nature with a high potential;

  he took my peace and traded it for war.

  “He’s made me love my God less than I should

  and made me lose all care for my own self;

  and this was for a lady

  for whom I put aside all other thoughts.

  In this respect he’s been my only counselor,

  whetting my young desire on his stone,

  and giving me no peace,

  when I had hopes of rest from his fierce yoke.

  “Oh, wretched man! Why did high Heaven bestow

  such gifts of dear, high intellect, and wit?

  My hair is turning white

  and still I cannot break my stubborn will.

  This cruel one I accuse

  has robbed me of my freedom and has turned

  a bitter life into a sweet addiction.

  “He made me search around the wilderness,

  rough beasts, rapacious thieves, and wiry brambles,

  hard people, harder customs,

  and all the woes that can beset a traveler;

  as mountains, valleys, marshes, seas, and rivers,

  a thousand snares spread out in all directions,

  and winter at strange times,

  with danger always present, and fatigue:

  “neither did he, nor that old enemy

  from whom I fled, leave me alone a minute;

  and if I haven’t come

  long since, before my time, to early death,

  well, that was Heaven’s care

  for my salvation, not this tyrant here

  who feeds upon my sorrow and my loss.

  “Since I’ve been his, I’ve had no peaceful hour,

  nor do I hope for one, and all my nights

  have banished sleep and can’t

  make it come back with medicine or charms;

  by treachery and force he’s made himself

  the master of my spirits, and since then

  no bell has rung, in any

  town I’ve been in, that hasn’t reached my ear.

  He knows in saying this I speak the truth,

  “for worms have never gnawed old wood the way

  he gnaws upon my heart, making his nest

  and threatening me with death.

  And that’s the source of all my tears and sufferings,

  my words and all my sighs,

  with which I wear myself and tire others.

  Judge us, I beg, oh, you who know us both.”

  My adversary has hi
s sharp reproaches,

  beginning thus: “Oh, hear the other side,

  Lady, for it shall tell

  the naked truth this ingrate has omitted.

  From early years this fellow peddled lies

  and threw his words around quite recklessly;

  nor does he seem ashamed

  (although I swapped him boredom for delight)

  “to rail at me, who kept him pure and clean

  of foul desire seeking its own harm,

  which now he grieves about,

  and gave him that sweet life he now calls wretched,

  and also gave him fame,

  raising his intellect and mind to heights

  they never could have managed on their own.

  “He knows that great Atrides, high Achilles,

  and Hannibal, so bitter to your country,

  and one who in his virtue

  was brightest and most fortunate of all:

  I let them fall in love, as stars ordained,

  in basest love with women who were slaves,

  whereas for this man I

  chose one among a thousand as his love,

  “such that her like will never be repeated,

  no, not if Rome regained its lost Lucretia;

  and I gave her such sweet

  expressions in her speech and such sweet song

  that low and heavy thoughts

  could not survive in her vicinity.

  And that’s what he describes as my deception,

  “that is the wormwood and the scorn and anger,

  sweeter than any woman ever seen!

  Good seed has borne bad fruit,

  my rich reward for helping such an ingrate.

  I sheltered him so well beneath my wing

  that all his words delighted knights and ladies;

  I helped him rise so high

  that there among a thousand brilliant wits

  “his name shines bright, and many people make

  collections of his poems; otherwise

  he would have been a hoarse

  and mumbling courtier, lost among the mob!

  I raised him up to fame

  by helping him to learn, in my own school,

  and from that one who has no parallel.

  “And, to tell finally my greatest service,

  I’ve kept him from a thousand vicious acts,

  for low and vile things

  could never serve to give him satisfaction

  (a young man shy and modest in his acts

  and thoughts) once he’d become her slave and vassal;

  she made so deep a mark

  upon his heart, that he must emulate her.

  “All that’s admired or noble in him comes

  from her and thus from me, whom he complains of.

  Nocturnal phantoms never

  were so filled up with error as this man,

  for since he’s known us both,

  he’s had the grace of God, and of the people:

  and that’s the kind of thing that he complains of!