30. ‘Giovene donna sotto un verde lauro’ (Sestina form)
I saw a girl under green laurel
colder and whiter than the snow
untouched by the sun for many years:
and her speech, her lovely face, her hair
so please me that she’s before my eyes,
and will be always, wherever, on sea or shore.
My thoughts at last will come to shore,
when there are no green leaves on laurel:
when I’ve quieted my heart, dried my eyes,
we’ll see freezing fire and burning snow:
and there’s not as many strands in my hair
as the years I’d wait to see that, and years.
But since time flies and they vanish, those years,
so that death comes to us, and so sure
either with dark hair or with white hair
I’ll follow the shadow of that sweet laurel,
through the brightest sun and through the snow,
until the last day closes my eyes.
Such lovely eyes were never seen
in our age or in earlier years,
that melt me as sun melts the snow:
from which proceeds a tear-drenched shore
a stream that Love leads under harsh laurel,
that has branches of steel, and golden hair.
I fear I’ll be altered in face and hair
before I see real pity in her eyes,
my idol sculptured from living laurel:
if I’ve not miscounted it’s seven years
today that I’ve sighed from shore to shore,
night and day, in heat and snow.
Fire inside, outside white snow
alone with these thoughts, with altered hair,
I’ll walk weeping along every shore
so that pity perhaps will appear in eyes
not to be born for a thousand years,
if such is the span of cultured laurel.
The laurel, topaz in sun on snow,
is exceeded by blonde hair near the eyes
that bring my years so slowly to shore.
29. ‘Verdi panni, sanguigni, oscuri o persi’
Green dresses, crimson, black or purple,
were never worn by ladies,
nor golden hair tied in a fair braid,
as beautifully as she who robs me
of my will, and takes away the path
of my liberty, so I cannot even
tolerate a lighter yoke.
And even if my spirit begins to grieve,
losing its judgement,
when suffering brings doubt,
the loose will is quickly restrained
by the sight of her, who razes from my heart
every mad project, and makes all
disdain sweet through seeing her.
I will have revenge, for all that Love
has made me suffer, all I must still suffer
until she heals the heart she ravaged,
she, alien to pity, but still enticing,
unless Anger and Pride opposing Humility
close off and deny the way
that leads to her.
And the day and the hour that opened my eyes
to the lovely dark and the lovely white
that emptied me of that where Love now lives,
were the new roots of the life that troubles me,
as she does in whom our age is reflected,
for he is made of lead or stone
whom she does not make afraid.
So no tear of those I weep,
because of these arrow-tips
bathing my heart, that first felt them, in blood,
signifies that I un-wish what I wished,
the punishment falls in the right place:
through the eyes my soul sighs, and it’s right
that they bathe my wounds.
My own thoughts struggle against me:
so Dido, weary as I am now,
turned her beloved sword against herself:
yet I do not pray for my freedom,
since all other roads to heaven are less true,
and there is no safer ship in which to aspire
to the glorious kingdom.
Benign stars that were friends
to that fortunate womb
when that beauty came to this world!
She is a star on earth, and she keeps
her chastity as laurel stays green,
so no lightning strikes her, no shameful breeze
can ever force her.
I know that to capture her praise in verse
would be to exceed
the most worthy that set hand to writing.
What cell of memory is there in which to hold
so much virtue and so much beauty together
that shine in her eyes, the sign of all value,
the key to unlock my heart.
Lady, beneath the sun’s circle, Love has
no greater treasure than you.
28. ‘O aspectata in ciel beata et bella’
O blessed and lovely spirit expected in Heaven
truly clothed with our humanity,
but not imprisoned in it like others:
oh God’s delight, obedient servant,
so that you ever find the gentler road,
by which we cross from here to his kingdom,
see how recently your boat
has turned its back on the blind world
to sail to a better harbour
with the sweet comfort of a western wind:
you’ll be conducted through the midst
of this dark valley where we weep for our
and another’s sin, from ancient bonds broken,
through the straightest path,
to the true East, towards which you have turned.
Perhaps the devoted and loving prayers
and the sacred tears of mortal beings
have made their way towards the highest pity:
and perhaps they were not great enough nor such
as to merit eternal justice bending
even a little from its course:
but the benign king who governs the heavens
through grace turns his eyes
to the sacred place where one hung on the cross,
breathing vengeance into the heart
of the new Charlemagne, so that delay would hurt us,
since Europe has sighed for it for many years:
so he brings aid to his beloved spouse
so that merely at his voice
Babylon trembles, and stands amazed.
Every place between the Garonne and the mountains,
between Rhone and Rhine and the salt waves
follows the highest ensign of Christ:
and those who ever sought true honour,
from the Pyrenees to the furthest horizon
empty Spain to follow Aragon:
England with the islands Ocean bathes
between the Pillars and the Bear,
as far as where the doctrine resounds
from the most sacred Helicon,
men of varied tongues and arms and dress,
spur to Heaven’s high enterprise.
What love, so lawful and worthy,
whether of children or of wife,
was the subject of such a just design?
There is a part of the world frozen,
always beneath the ice and cold snow,
so far is it from the sun’s path:
the day there is clouded and brief,
and bears a people that death does not grieve,
the natural enemies of peace.
So that if they became more devout than they are,
and took up swords with German fury,
we would soon find out the worth
of the Turks, and Arabs, and Chaldeans,
with all the gods they place their hopes in,
this side of the sea with blood-red waters:
lazy and fearful, naked peoples,
who never fight with steel,
but commit their weapons to the winds.
Now is the time to throw off the yoke
of ancient slavery, and the thick veil
that has long been draped over our eyes:
and for the noble wit you possess
from heaven by the grace of the immortal Apollo,
and your eloquence, to show its power
now in the spoken, now the written word:
for if you don’t marvel at the legends
of Orpheus and Amphion,
less should you at rousing Italy’s sons
with the sound of your clear speech,
so they take up the lance for Christ:
for if this ancient motherland seeks truth,
in none of her intentions
was ever so lovely or noble a cause.
You who’ve enriched yourself
turning the ancient and modern pages,
flying to heaven in an earthly body,
you know, from the empire of Mars’ son
to when great Augustus three times
crowned his head with green laurel,
how many times through injury to others
Rome was generous with her blood:
and should she not be now,
not generous but dutiful and pious
in avenging the impious injury
to the Son of our glorious Mary?
What hope can the enemy have
or human defence
if Christ fights against them?
Remember the rash audacity of Xerxes
who outraged the sea with alien bridges
made in order to land on our shores:
and see how all the Persian women
were dressed in black for their dead husbands:
and the sea at Salamis tinted red.
And not only is victory promised
by that ruinous misery for the sad
Eastern peoples,
but Marathon, and that vital pass
that the Spartan lion defended with the few,
and other battles you have heard of or read:
so we should certainly bow to God,
our knees and spirit,
He who has preserved our age for so much good.
Song, you’ll see Italy and the famous river,
not hidden from my eyes, not concealed
by sea, or hill, or stream,
but only by Love that with his other light
binds me closer the more he fires me:
nor is Nature more opposed to habit.
Now go, without losing other friends,
since Love for which we smile and weep
does not live only beneath women’s veils.
Notes: Addressed to Giacomo Colonna. Amphion
and Orpheus moved stones and trees with their music.
Romulus was the son of Mars. Xerxes famously bridged
the Hellespont but was countered at the naval battle
of Salamis in 480BC. Darius his father had been defeated
at Marathon in 490BC. Leonidas, the Spartan King, stalled
the Persians at Thermopylae through his heroic resistance.
27. ‘Il successor di Karlo, che la chioma’
Charlemagne’s scion, whose head is adorned
with the royal crown of his ancestor,
has taken up arms to bring Babylon down
and all that take their name from her.
and the Vicar of Christ returns to the nest
with the mantle and the burdensome keys,
and if no further accident deters him,
he’ll reach Bologna, and then noble Rome.
That mild and gentle lamb of yours
destroys the fierce wolves: and so may it be
with all who shatter lawful alliances.
Console her then, you whom she waits for,
and Rome who still complains of her spouse,
and take up the sword now for Christ.
Notes: Philip VI of France proclaimed a crusade in 1333
against Islam, symbolised here by Babylon.
The Papacy is to return from Avignon to Rome.
The poem may be addressed to Orso dell’Anguillara.
26. ‘Piú di me lieta non si vede a terra’
No ship, beaten and conquered by the waves,
ever made land more happily than me,
when people who were crying for mercy
kneel down on the shore to give thanks:
he who has the rope already round his neck
is no happier to be freed from his bonds,
than me, seeing all those swords shattered
that made so long a war against my lord.
And all who praise Love in your rhymes,
give honour now to the true writer
of loving songs who once went astray:
for there’s more joy, in the realms of the chosen,
in a penitent spirit, and he is more esteemed
than the ninety-nine others who were perfect.
Note: See Luke XV.7
25. ‘Amor piangeva, et io con lui tavolta’
Love wept, and sometimes I wept with him,
from whom my steps never strayed far,
gazing, since the effect was bitter and strange,
at your spirit, set loose from all Love’s bonds.
Now God has returned you to the true way,
I lift my hands with all my heart to heaven,
thankful to him who in his mercy listens
benignly to honest human prayers.
And if in returning to the loving path,
you found hills and ditches in your way
enough to almost make you turn back,
it was to show how thorny is the road,
and how mountainous and hard the climb,
if a man would find where true worth lies.
24. ‘Se l’onorata fronde che prescrive’
If the honoured branch that wards off
heaven’s anger when great Jupiter thunders
had not refused me its laurel crown
which usually wreathes those who write poetry,
I would be a friend of those Muses of yours
that this unworthy age has abandoned:
but that injustice keeps me far from
Minerva who first gave us olive trees:
for the sands of Ethiopia could not burn
hotter under the burning sun than I blaze
at losing a thing so beloved, as my own.
Search out a steadier fount than mine,
which only wells in an impoverished stream,
except for that which distils from my tears.
Note: A reply to a poem from Andrea Stramazzo
da Perugia, asking for verses.
23. ‘Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade’
I’ll sing of the sweet time of my first youth,
that saw the birth and the first leafing
of fierce desire that blossomed to my hurt,
since grief is rendered less bitter by being sung:
I’ll sing of when I lived in liberty,
while Love was disdained in my house.
Then follow it with how I scorned him
too deeply, and say what came of it,
of how I was made an example to many men:
even though my harsh ruin
is written of elsewhere, so that a thousand pens
are not yet weary of it, and almost every valley
echoes again to the sound of my deep sighs
that add credence to my painful life.
And if memory does not aid me
as it once did, blame my sufferings,
and one thought which is anguished
it makes me turn my back on every other,
and by the same light makes me forget myself:
ruling what is inside me, I the shell.
I say that many years had passed
since Love tried his first assault on me,
so that I had lost my juvenile aspect,
and frozen thoughts about my heart
had almost made a covering of enamel,
so that its hardness left nothing lacking.
Still no tears had bathed my cheeks,
my sleep unbroken, and what I could not feel
seemed like a marvel to me in others.
Alas what am I? What was I?
Life is ended, and evening crowns the day.
That savage adversary of whom I speak,
seeing at last that not a single shot
of his had even pierced my clothes,
brought a powerful lady to help him,
against whom intellect, or force,
or asking mercy never were or are of value:
and the two transformed me to what I am,
making green laurel from a living man,
that loses no leaves in the coldest season.
What a state I was in when I first realized
the transfiguration of my person,
and saw my hair formed of those leaves
that I had hoped might yet crown me,
and my feet with which I stand, move, run,
since each member accords with the spirit,
turned into two roots by the water
not of Peneus, but a nobler river,
and both my arms changed to branches!
The memory still chills me,
of being clothed then in white plumage,
when my hope that had tried to climb too high
was lightning-struck and lying dead,
and I, who had no idea where or when
I might retrieve it, went weeping alone
day and night where I had lost it,
searching the banks and beneath the water:
and while I might my tongue was never silent
from that moment about hope’s evil fall:
until I took on, with its voice, the colour of a swan.
So I went along the pleasant stream,
and wishing to speak I found I always sang,
calling for mercy in a strange voice,
but never making my loving sorrows echo
in so sweet or in so soft a mode
as to make that harsh and savage heart relent.
What was it to feel so? How the memory burns me:
but I need to say more than this
of my sweet and bitter enemy,
more than ever before,
though she is such as is beyond all telling.
She who maddens men with her gaze,
opened my chest, and took my heart in her hand,
saying to me: ‘Speak no word of this.’
Then I saw her alone, in a different dress,
so that I did not know her, oh human senses,
and full of fear told her the truth:
and she turning quickly back
to her usual guise, made me, alas,
semi-living and dumb stone.
She spoke to me, so angered in aspect
that she made me tremble inside the rock,
saying: ‘Perhaps I am not what you believe.’
And I said to myself: ‘If only she releases me
from the rock, no life will make me troubled or sad:
return, my lord, and let me weep.’
I moved my feet then, I don’t know how,
still blaming no-one but my own self,
between living and dying, all that day.
But because the time is short
my pen cannot keep pace with my true will:
I must pass over many more things
inscribed in my mind, and only speak of those
that will seem marvellous to those who hear.
Death circled round about my heart,
which I could not rescue by being silent,
nor could I help my afflicted senses:
a living voice was forbidden me:
so I cried out with paper and ink:
‘I am not my own. If I die the loss is yours.’
I truly thought I could turn myself in her eyes
from worthlessness to a thing of worth,
and that hope had made me eager:
but hope at times is quenched by disdain
at times takes fire: and so I found it then,
placed in the shadows for so long,
for at my prayers my true light had left me.
And not finding a shadow of her, her or there,
nor even the print of her foot,
one day I flung myself down on the grass
like a traveller who sleeps on the way.
Accusing the fugitive ray of light, from there,
I loosed the reins of my sad tears,
and let them fall as they wished,
I felt myself melt wholly, as snow
never vanished so in the sun,
becoming a fount at a beech-tree’s foot.
I held that moist course for a length of time.
Who ever heard of fountains born of men?
et I tell you something manifest and known.
The soul whose gentleness is all from God,
since such grace could come from nowhere else,
holds a virtue like that of its maker:
it grants pardon, and never wearies,
to him of humble face and heart,
whatever sins he comes to mercy with.
And if contrary to its nature it suffers
being prayed to often, it mirrors Him,
and so makes the sin more fearful:
for he does not truly repent
who prepares for one sin with another.
So my lady moved by pity
deigned to look down on me, and seeing
I revealed a punishment matched to the sin,
she kindly returned me to my first state.
But there’s nothing a man can trust to in this world:
praying to her still, I felt my bone and nerves
turn to hard flint: and only a voice shaken
from my former being remained,
calling on Death, and calling her by name.
A grieving spirit (I recall) I wandered
through empty and alien caverns,
weeping my errant ardour for many years:
and at least reached its end,
and I returned to my earthly limbs,
I think in order to suffer greater pain.
I followed my desire so closely
that hunting one day as was my custom,
I saw that creature, wild and beautiful,
standing naked
in a pool, when the sun shone most brightly.
I, because no other sight so pleases me,
stood and gazed: she covered in her shame:
and for revenge or to hide herself,
she splashed water in my face, with her hand.
I speak the truth (though I may seem to lie)
that I felt myself altered from my true form,
and swiftly transmuted to a lonely stag,
wandering from wood to wood:
and fleeing from my own pack of hounds.
Song, I was never that golden cloud
that once fell as a precious shower,
so that Jove’s flame was quenched a little:
but I have been the fire that a lovely look kindled,
and the bird that rises highest in the air,
exalting her with my words in honour:
nor could I leave the highest laurel
for some new shape, for by its sweet shade
all lesser beauties that please the heart are scattered.
Notes: Daphne was changed to a laurel on the banks
of the Peneus. Petrarch compares it with the Sorgue,
Durance, or Rhone. Cycnus was changed into a swan
mourning for Phaethon. Battus revealed a secret,
to Mercury in disguise, and was turned to flint.
Byblis was turned into a fountain, after rejecting
her brother’s love. Echo turned into a voice echoing
Narcissus. Actaeon saw Diana bathing and was turned
into a stag and hunted to death by his hounds. Jupiter
raped Danae in a shower of gold, and as an eagle
carried off Ganymede. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses
for all these references.
22. ‘A qualunque animale alberga in terra,’ (Sestina)
The time to labour, for every animal
that inhabits earth, is when it is still day,
except for those to whom the sun is hateful:
but then when heaven sets fire to its stars,
some turn for home and some nestle in the woods
to find some rest before the dawn.
And I may not cease to sigh with the sun,
from when dawn begins to scatter
the shadows from around the Earth,
waking the animals in every woodland:
yet when I see the flaming of the stars
I go weeping, and desire the day.
When the evening drives out daylight’s clarity,
and our shadow makes another’s dawn,
I gaze pensively at cruel stars,
that have created me of sentient earth:
and I curse the day I saw the sun,
that makes me in aspect like a wild man of the woods.
I do not think that any creature so harsh
grazed the woods, either by night or day,
as she, through whom I weep in sun or shade:
and I am not wearied by first sleep or dawn:
for though I am mortal body of this earth,
my fixed desire comes from the stars.
Might I see pity in her, for one day,
before I return to you, bright stars,
or turning back into cherished woodland,
leave my body changed to dry earth,
it would restore many years, and before dawn
enrich me at the setting of the sun.
May I be with her when the sun departs,
and seen by no one but the stars,
for one sole night, and may there be no dawn:
and may she not be changed to green woodland,
issuing from my arms, as on the day
when Apollo pursued her down here on earth.
But I will be beneath the wood’s dry earth,
and daylight will be full of little stars,
before the sun achieves so sweet a dawn.
Note. Apollo pursued Daphne who was transformed
into a laurel bough, a play on Laura’s name.
21. ‘Mille fiate, o dolce mia guerrera,’
I have offered you my heart a thousand times
O my sweet warrior, only to make peace
with your lovely eyes: but it does not please you
with your noble mind, to stoop so low.
And if some other lady has hope of it,
she lives in powerless, deceiving hope:
and it can never be what it was to me,
since I too disdain what does not please you.
Now if I banish it, and it does not find in you
any aid in its unhappy exile, nor knows
how to be alone, nor to go where others call to it,
it might stray from its natural course:
which would be a grave crime for both of us,
and more for you, since it loves you more.
