LAURA IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM
If the birds are making lamentation, or the green banks are moved by a little wind of summer, or you can hear the waters making a stir by the shores that are green and flowery.
That’s where I do be stretched out thinking of love, writing my songs, and herself that Heaven shows me though hidden in the earth I set my eyes on, and hear the way that she feels my sighs and makes an answer to me.
“Alas,” I hear her say, “why are you using yourself up before the time is come, and pouring out a stream of tears so sad and doleful.
“You’d do right to be glad rather, for in dying I won days that have no ending, and when you saw me shutting up my eyes I was opening them on the light that is eternal.”
HE CEASES TO SPEAK OF HER
GRACES AND HER VIRTUES
WHICH ARE NO MORE
The eyes that I would be talking of so warmly, and the arms, and the hands, and the feet, and the face that are after calling me away from myself, and making me a lonesome man among all people.
The hair that was of shining gold, and brightness of the smile that was the like of an angel’s surely, and was making a paradise of the earth, are turned to a little dust that knows nothing at all.
And yet I myself am living; it is for this I am making a complaint to be left without the light I had such a great love for, in good fortune and bad, and this will be the end of my songs of love, for the vein where I had cleverness is dried up, and every thing I have is turned to complaint only.
HE IS JEALOUS OF THE HEAVENS
AND THE EARTH
What a grudge I am bearing the earth that has its arms about her, and is holding that face away from me, where I was finding peace from great sadness.
What a grudge I am bearing the Heavens that are after taking her, and shutting her in with greediness, the Heavens that do push their bolt against so many.
What a grudge I am bearing the blessed saints that have got her sweet company, that I am always seeking; and what a grudge I am bearing against Death, that is standing in her two eyes, and will not call me with a word.
THE FINE TIME OF THE YEAR
INCREASES PETRARCH’S SORROW
The south wind is coming back, bringing the fine season, and the flowers, and the grass, her sweet family, along with her. The swallow and the nightingale are making a stir, and the spring is turning white and red in every place.
There is a cheerful look on the meadows, and peace in the sky, and the sun is well pleased, I’m thinking, looking downward, and the air and the waters and the earth herself are full of love, and every beast is turning back looking for its mate.
And what is coming to me is great sighing and trouble, which herself is drawing out of my deep heart, herself that has taken the key of it up to Heaven.
And it is this way I am, that the singing birds, and the flowers of the earth, and the sweet ladies, with their grace and comeliness, are the like of a desert to me, and wild beasts astray in it.
HE UNDERSTANDS THE GREAT
CRUELTY OF DEATH
My flowery and green age was passing away, and I feeling a chill in the fires had been wasting my heart, for I was drawing near the hillside that is above the grave.
Then my sweet enemy was making a start, little by little, to give over her great wariness, the way she was wringing a sweet thing out of my sharp sorrow. The time was coming when Love and Decency can keep company, and lovers may sit together and say out all things are in their hearts. But Death had his grudge against me, and he got up in the way, like an armed robber, with a pike in his hand.
THE SIGHT OF LAURA’S HOUSE
REMINDS HIM OF THE GREAT
HAPPINESS HE HAS LOST
Is this the nest in which my Phœnix put on her feathers of gold and purple, my Phœnix that did hold me under her wing, and she drawing out sweet words and sighs from me? Oh, root of my sweet misery, where is that beautiful face, where light would be shining out, the face that did keep my heart like a flame burning? She was without a match upon the earth, I hear them say, and now she is happy in the Heavens.
And she has left me after her dejected and lonesome, turning back all times to the place I do be making much of for her sake only, and I seeing the night on the little hills where she took her last flight up into the Heavens, and where one time her eyes would make sunshine and it night itself.
HE SENDS HIS RHYMES TO THE
TOMB OF LAURA TO PRAY HER
TO CALL HIM TO HER
Let you go down, sorrowful rhymes, to the hard rock is covering my dear treasure, and then let you call out till herself that is in the Heavens will make answer, though her dead body is lying in a shady place.
Let you say to her that it is tired out I am with being alive, with steering in bad seas, but I am going after her step by step, gathering up what she let fall behind her.
It is of her only I do be thinking, and she living and dead, and now I have made her with my songs so that the whole world may know her, and give her the love that is her due.
May it please her to be ready for my own passage that is getting near; may she be there to meet me, herself in the Heavens, that she may call me, and draw me after her.
ONLY HE WHO MOURNS HER AND
HEAVEN THAT POSSESSES HER,
KNEW HER WHILE SHE LIVED
Ah, Death, it is you that have left the world cold and shady, with no sun over it. It’s you have left Love without eyes or arms to him, you’ve left liveliness stripped, and beauty without a shape to her, and all courtesy in chains, and honesty thrown down into a hole. I am making lamentation alone, though it isn’t myself only has a cause to be crying out; since you, Death, have crushed the first seed of goodness in the whole world, and with it gone what place will we find a second?
The air and the earth and seas would have a good right to be crying out—and they pitying the race of men that is left without herself, like a meadow without flowers or a ring robbed of jewellery.
The world didn’t know her the time she was in it, but I myself knew her—and I left now to be weeping in this place; and the Heavens knew her, the Heavens that are giving an ear this day to my crying out.