XV

O ye who trace through scattered verse the sound
Of those long sighs wherewith I fed my heart
Amid youth’s errors, when in greater part
That man unlike this present man was found;
For the mixed strain which here I do compound
Of empty hopes and pains that vainly start,
Whatever soul hath truly felt love’s smart,
With pity and with pardon will abound.
But now I see full well how long I earned
All men’s reproof; and oftentimes my soul
Lies crushed by its own grief; and it doth seem
For such misdeed shame is the fruitage whole,
And wild repentance and the knowledge learned
That worldly joy is still a short, short dream.

FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY COPIES
PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, IN THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER,
MDCCCCIII. NUMBER 426

Transcriber’s Note: Below is a list of printer errors that have been corrected in the Italian sonnets, by reference to the 1964 critical edition of Il Canzoniere edited by Gianfranco Contini, available at [Liber Liber]. The translator of this book probably used as his source an edition in which spelling and punctuation were somewhat modernized; these modernizations have not been altered in this e-book. Spacing of elisions (such as “ch’ascolti”) has been normalized. The original book was printed almost entirely in italics, which are not marked as such in this e-text. Printer errors in the English introduction have been corrected without note.

SonnetLineErrorCorrection
[II]10a’udendod’udendo
[III]14CheChé
[IV]13cheché
[VI]4CheChé
[VI]12sisì
[VII]9dogliadoglio
[VIII]9CheChé

The sonnets in this book correspond to the following numbers in Il Canzoniere:

This bookIl Canzoniere
[I]162 Lieti fiori
[II]167 Quando Amor
[III]227 Aura che quelle chiome
[IV]261 Qual donna attende
[V]161 O passi sparsi
[VI]156 I’ vidi in terra
[VII]292 Gli occhi di ch’io parlai
[VIII]294 Soleasi nel mio cor
[IX]302 Levommi il mio pensier
[X]351 Dolci durezze
[XI]346 Gli angeli eletti
[XII]361 Dicemi spesso
[XIII]353 Vago augelletto
[XIV]7 La gola e ’l sonno
[XV]1 Voi ch’ascoltate