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It is with diffidence that I offer a translation of Michael Angelo’s sonnets, for the first time completely rendered into English rhyme, and that I venture on a version of Campanella’s philosophical poems. My excuse, if I can plead any for so bold an attempt, may be found in this—that, so far as I am aware, no other English writer has dealt with Michael Angelo’s verses since the publication of his autograph; while Campanella’s sonnets have hitherto been almost utterly unknown.
Something must be said to justify the issue of poems so dissimilar in a single volume. Michael Angelo and Campanella represent widely sundered, though almost contemporaneous, moments in the evolution of the Italian genius. Michael Angelo was essentially an artist, living in the prime of the Renaissance. Campanella was a philosopher, born when the Counter-Reformation was doing all it could to blight the free thought of the sixteenth century; and when the modern spirit of exact enquiry, in a few philosophical martyrs, was opening a new stage for European science. The one devoted all his mental energies to the realisation of beauty: the other strove to ascertain truth. The one clung to Ficino’s dream of Platonising Christianity: the other constructed for himself a new theology, founded on the conception of God immanent in nature. Michael Angelo expressed the aspirations of a solitary life dedicated to the service of art, at a time when art received the suffrage and the admiration of all Italy. Campanella gave utterance to a spirit, exiled and isolated, misunderstood by those with whom he lived, at a moment when philosophy was hunted down as heresy and imprisoned as treason to the public weal.
The marks of this difference in the external and internal circumstances of the two poets might be multiplied indefinitely. Yet they had much in common. Both stood above their age, and in a sense aloof from it. Both approached poetry in the spirit of thinkers bent upon extricating themselves from the trivialities of contemporary literature. The sonnets of both alike are contributions to philosophical poetry in an age when the Italians had lost their ancient manliness and energy. Both were united by the ties of study and affection to the greatest singer of their nation, Dante, at a time when Petrarch, thrice diluted and emasculated, was the Phoebus of academies and coteries.
This common antagonism to the degenerate genius of Italian literature is the link which binds Michael Angelo, the veteran giant of the Renaissance, to Campanella, the audacious Titan of the modern age.
My translation of Michael Angelo’s sonnets has been made from Signor Cesare Guasti’s edition of the autograph, first given to the world in 1863.[1] This masterpiece of laborious and minute scholarship is based upon a collation of the various manuscripts preserved in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence with the Vatican and other Codices. It adheres to the original orthography of Michael Angelo, and omits no fragment of his indubitable compositions.[2] Signor Guasti prefaces the text he has so carefully prepared, with a discourse upon the poetry of Michael Angelo and a description of the manuscripts. To the poems themselves he adds a prose paraphrase, and prints upon the same page with each composition the version published by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1623.[3]
Before the publication of this volume, all studies of Michael Angelo’s poetry, all translations made of it, and all hypotheses deduced from the sculptor’s verse in explanation of his theory or his practice as an artist, were based upon the edition of 1623. It will not be superfluous to describe what that edition was, and how its text differed from that now given to the light, in order that the relation of my own English version to those which have preceded it may be rightly understood.[4]
Michael Angelo seems to have entertained no thought of printing his poems in his lifetime. He distributed them freely among his friends, of whom Sebastiano del Piombo, Luigi del Riccio, Donato Giannotti, Vittoria Colonna, and Tommaso de’ Cavalieri were in this respect the most favoured. In course of time some of these friends, partly by the gift of the originals, and partly by obtaining copies, formed more or less complete collections; and it undoubtedly occurred to more than one to publish them. Ascanio Condivi, at the close of his biography, makes this announcement: ’I hope ere long to make public some of his sonnets and madrigals, which I have been long collecting, both from himself and others who possessed them, with a view to proving to the world the force of his inventive genius and the beauty of the thoughts produced by that divine spirit.’ Condivi’s promise was not fulfilled. With the exception of two or three pieces printed by Vasari, and the extracts quoted by Varchi in his ’Lezione,’[5] the poems of Michael Angelo remained in manuscript for fifty-nine years after his death. The most voluminous collection formed part of the Buonarroti archives; but a large quantity preserved by Luigi del Riccio, and from him transferred to Fulvio Orsini, had passed into the Vatican Library, when Michelangelo the younger conceived the plan of publishing his granduncle’s poetry. Michelangelo obtained leave to transcribe the Vatican MSS. with his own hand; and after taking pains to collate all the autographs and copies in existence, he set himself to compare their readings, and to form a final text for publication. Here, however, began what we may call the Tragedy of his Rifacimento. The more he studied his great ancestor’s
Nearly all Michael Angelo’s sonnets express personal feelings, and by far the greater number of them were composed after his sixtieth year. To whom they were addressed, we only know in a few instances. Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, the two most intimate friends of his old age in Rome, received from him some of the most pathetically beautiful of his love-poems. But to suppose that either the one or the other was the object of more than a few well-authenticated sonnets would be hazardous. Nothing is more clear than that Michael Angelo worshipped Beauty in the Platonic spirit, passing beyond its personal and specific manifestations to the universal and impersonal. This thought is repeated over and over again in his poetry; and if we bear in mind that he habitually regarded the loveliness of man or woman as a sign and symbol of eternal and immutable beauty, we shall feel it of less importance to discover who it was that prompted him to this or that poetic utterance. That the loves of his youth were not so tranquil as those of his old age, appears not only from the regrets expressed in his religious verses, but also from one or two of the rare sonnets referable to his manhood.
The love of beauty, the love of Florence, and the love of Christ, are the three main motives of his poetry. This is not the place to discuss at length the nature of his philosophy, his patriotism, or his religion; to enquire how far he retained the early teaching of Ficino and Savonarola; or to trace the influence of Dante and the Bible on his mind. I may, however, refer my readers who are interested in these questions, to the Discourse of Signor Guasti, the learned essay of Mr. J.E. Taylor, and the refined study of Mr. W.H. Pater. My own views will be found expressed in the third volume of my ‘Renaissance in Italy’; and where I think it necessary, I shall take occasion to repeat them in the notes appended to my translation.
Michael Angelo’s madrigals and sonnets were eagerly sought for during his lifetime. They formed the themes of learned academical discourses, and won for him the poet’s crown in death. Upon his tomb the Muse of Song was carved in company with Sculpture, Architecture, and Painting. Since the publication of the rifacimento in 1623, his verses have been used among the testi di lingua by Italians, and have been studied in the three great languages of Europe. The fate of Campanella’s philosophical poems has been very different. It was owing to a fortunate chance that they survived their author; and until the year 1834 they were wholly and entirely unknown in Italy. The history of their preservation is so curious that I cannot refrain from giving some account of it, before proceeding to sketch so much of Campanella’s life and doctrine as may be necessary for the understanding of his sonnets.
The poems were composed during Campanella’s imprisonment at Naples; and from internal evidence there is good reason to suppose that the greater part of them were written at intervals in the first fourteen years of the twenty-five he passed in confinement.[9] In the descriptive catalogue of his own works, the philosopher mentions seven books of sonnets and canzoni, which he called ’Le Cantiche.’[10] Whether any of these would have been printed but for a mere accident is doubtful. A German gentleman, named Tobia Adami, who is supposed to have been a Court-Counsellor at Weimar, after travelling through Greece, Syria, and Palestine, in company with a young friend called Rodolph von Bunau, visited Campanella in his dungeon. A close intimacy sprang up between them, and Adami undertook to publish several works of the philosopher in testimony of his admiration. Among these were ‘Le Cantiche.’ Instead, however, of printing the poems in extenso, he made a selection, choosing those apparently which took his fancy, and which, in his opinion, threw most light on Campanella’s philosophical theories. It is clear that he neglected the author’s own arrangement, since there is no trace of the division into seven books. What proportion the selection bore to the whole bulk of the Ms. seems to me uncertain, though the latest editor asserts that it formed only a seventh part.[11] The manuscript itself is lost, and Adami’s edition of the specimens is all that now remains as basis for the text of Campanella’s poems.
This first edition was badly printed in Germany on very bad paper, without the name of press or place. Besides the poems, it contained a brief prose commentary by the editor, the value of which is still very great, since we have the right to suppose that Adami’s explanations embodied what he had received by word of mouth from Campanella. The little book bore this title:—’Scelta d’ alcune poesie filosofiche di Settimontano Squilla cavate da’ suo’ libri detti La Cantica, con l’esposizione, stampato nell’ anno MDCXXII.’ The pseudonym Squilla is a pun upon Campanella’s name, since both Campana and Squilla mean a bell; while Settimontano contains a quaint allusion to the fact that the philosopher’s skull was remarkable for seven protuberances.[12] A very few copies of the unpretending little volume were printed; and none of these seem to have found their way into Italy, though it is possible that they had a certain circulation in Germany. At any rate there is reason to suppose that Leibnitz was not unacquainted with the poems, while Herder, in the Renaissance of German literature, published free translations from a few of the sonnets in his ‘Adrastea.’
To this circumstance we owe the reprint of 1834, published at Lugano by John Gaspar Orelli, the celebrated Zurich scholar. Early in his youth Orelli was delighted with the German version made by Herder; and during his manhood, while residing as Protestant pastor at Bergamo, he used his utmost endeavours to procure a copy of the original. In his preface to the reprint he tells us that these efforts were wholly unsuccessful through a period of twenty-five years. He applied to all his literary friends, among whom he mentions the ardent Ugo Foscolo and the learned Mazzuchelli; but none of these could help him. He turned the pages of Crescimbeni, Quadrio, Gamba, Corniani, Tiraboschi, weighty with enormous erudition—and only those who make a special study of Italian know how little has escaped their scrutiny—but found no mention of Campanella as a poet. At last, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, he received the long-coveted little quarto volume from Wolfenbuttel in the north of Germany. The new edition which Orelli gave to the press at Lugano has this title:—’Poesie Filosofiche di Tommaso Campanella pubblicate per la prima volta in Italia da Gio. Gaspare Orelli, Professore all’ Universita di Zurigo. Lugano, 1834.’ The same text has been again reprinted at Turin, in 1854, by Alessandro d’Ancona, together with some of Campanella’s minor works and an essay on his life and writings. This third edition professes to have improved Orelli’s punctuation and to have rectified his readings. But it still leaves much to be desired on the score of careful editorship. Neither Orelli nor D’Ancona has done much to clear up the difficulties of the poems—difficulties in many cases obviously due to misprints and errors of the first transcriber; while in one or two instances they allow patent blunders to pass uncorrected. In the sonnet entitled ‘A Dio’ (D’Ancona, vol. i. p. 102), for example, bocca stands for buca in a place where sense and rhyme alike demand the restitution of the right word.
At no time could the book have hoped for many readers. Least of all would it have found them among the Italians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to whom its energetic language and unfamiliar conceptions would have presented insuperable difficulties. Between Dante and Alfieri no Italian poet except Michael Angelo expressed so much deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of style so daring; and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform in his diction, when compared with the indescribable violence and vigour of Campanella. Campanella borrows little by way of simile or illustration from the outer world, and he never falls into the commonplaces of poetic phraseology. His poems exhibit the exact opposite of the Petrarchistic or the Marinistic mannerism. Each sonnet seems to have been wrenched alive and palpitating from the poet’s heart. There is no smoothness, no gradual unfolding of a theme, no rhetorical exposition, no fanciful embroidery, no sweetness of melodic cadence, in his masculine art of poetry. Brusque, rough, violent in transition, leaping from the sublime to the ridiculous—his poems owe their elevation to the intensity of their feeling, the nobleness and condensation of their thought, the energy and audacity of their expression, their brevity, sincerity, and weight of sentiment. Campanella had an essentially combative intellect. He was both a poet and a philosopher militant. He stood alone, making war upon the authority of Aristotle in science, of Machiavelli in state-craft, and of Petrarch in art, taking the fortresses of phrase by storm, and subduing the hardest material of philosophy to the tyranny of his rhymes. Plebeian saws, salient images, dry sentences of metaphysical speculation, logical summaries, and fiery tirades are hurled together— half crude and cindery scoriae, half molten metal and resplendent ore— from the volcano of his passionate mind. Such being the nature of Campanella’s style, when in addition it is remembered that his text is sometimes hopelessly corrupt and his allusions obscure, the difficulties offered by his sonnets to the translator will be readily conceived.
At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, philosophy took a new point of departure among the Italians, and all the fundamental ideas which have since formed the staple of modern European systems were anticipated by a few obscure thinkers. It is noticeable that the States of Naples, hitherto comparatively inert in the intellectual development of Italy, furnished the five writers who preceded Bacon, Leibnitz, Schelling, and Comte. Telesio of Cosenza, Bruno of Nola, Campanella of Stilo, Vanini and Vico of Naples are the chief among these novi homines or pioneers of modern thought. The characteristic point of this new philosophy was an unconditional return to Nature as the source of
The men who led this weighty intellectual movement burned with the passionate ardour of discoverers, the fiery enthusiasm of confessors. They stood alone, sustained but little by intercourse among themselves, and wholly misunderstood by the people round them. Italy, sunk in sloth, priest-ridden, tyrant-ridden, exhausted with the unparalleled activity of the Renaissance, besotted with the vices of slavery and slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church, terrified by the Reformation, when she chanced to hear those strange voices sounding through ‘the blessed mutter of the mass,’ burned the prophets. The State, represented by absolute Spain, if it listened to them at all, flung them into prison. To both Church and State there was peril in the new philosophy; for the new philosophy was the first birth-cry of the modern genius, with all the crudity and clearness, the brutality and uncompromising sincerity of youth. The Church feared Nature. The State feared the People. Nature and the People—those watchwords of modern Science and modern Liberty—were already on the lips of the philosophers.
It was a philosophy armed, errant, exiled; a philosophy in chains and solitary; at war with society, authority, opinion; self-sustained by the prescience of ultimate triumph, and invincible through the sheer force of passionate conviction. The men of whom I speak were conscious of Pariahdom, and eager to be martyred in the glorious cause. ’A very Proteus is the philosopher,’ says Pomponazzo: ’seeking to penetrate the secrets of God, he is consumed with ceaseless cares; he forgets to thirst, to hunger, to sleep, to eat; he is derided of all men; he is held for a fool and irreligious person; he is persecuted by inquisitors; he becomes a gazing-stock to the common folk. These are the gains of the philosopher; these are his guerdon. Pomponazzo’s words were prophetic. Of the five philosophers whom I mentioned, Vanini was burned as an atheist, Bruno was burned, and Campanella was imprisoned for a quarter of a century. Both Bruno and Campanella were Dominican friars. Bruno was persecuted by the Church, and burned for heresy. Campanella was persecuted by both Church and State, and was imprisoned on the double charge of sedition and heresy. Dormitantium animarum excubitor was the self-given title of Bruno. Nunquam tacebo was the favourite motto of Campanella.
Giovanni Domenico Campanella was born in the year 1568 at Stilo in Calabria, one of the most southern townships of all Italy. In his boyhood he showed a remarkable faculty for acquiring and retaining knowledge, together with no small dialectical ability. His keen interest in philosophy and his admiration for the great Dominican doctors, Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, induced him at the age of fifteen to enter the order of S. Dominic, exchanging his secular name for Tommaso. But the old alliance between philosophy and orthodoxy, drawn up by scholasticism and approved by the mediaeval Church, had been succeeded by mutual hostility; and the youthful thinker found no favour in the cloister of Cosenza, where he now resided. The new philosophy taught by Telesio placed itself in direct antagonism to the pseudo-Aristotelian tenets of the theologians, and founded its own principles upon the Interrogation of Nature. Telesio, says Bacon, was the prince of the novi homines, or inaugurators of modern thought. It was natural that Campanella should be drawn towards this great man. But the superiors of his convent prevented his forming the acquaintance of Telesio; and though the two men dwelt in the same city of Cosenza, Campanella never knew the teacher he admired so passionately. Only when the old man died and his body was exposed in the church before burial, did the neophyte of his philosophy approach the bier, and pray beside it, and place poems upon the dead.
From this time forward Campanella became an object of suspicion to his brethren. They perceived that the fire of the new philosophy burned in his powerful nature with incalculable and explosive force. He moved restlessly from place to place, learning and discussing, drawing men towards him by the magnetism of a noble personality, and preaching his new gospel with perilous audacity. His papers were seized at Bologna; and at Rome the Holy Inquisition condemned him to perpetual incarceration on the ground that he derived his science from the devil, that he had written the book ‘De tribus Impostoribus,’ that he was a follower of Democritus, and that his opposition to Aristotle savoured of gross heresy. At the same time the Spanish Government of Naples accused him of having set on foot a dangerous conspiracy for overthrowing the vice-regal power and establishing a communistic commonwealth in southern Italy. Though nothing was proved satisfactorily against him, Campanella was held a prisoner under the sentence which the Inquisition had pronounced upon him. He was, in fact, a man too dangerous, too original in his opinions, and too bold in their enunciation, to be at large. For twenty-five years he remained in Neapolitan dungeons; three times during that period he was tortured to the verge of dying; and at last he was released, while quite an old man, at the urgent request of the French Court. Not many years after his liberation Campanella died. The numerous philosophical
The sonnets by Campanella translated in this volume might be rearranged under four headings—Philosophical; Political; Prophetic; Personal. The philosophical group throw light on Campanella’s relation to his predecessors and his antagonism to the pseudo-Aristotelian scholasticism of the middle ages. They furthermore explain his conception of the universe as a complex animated organism, his conviction that true knowledge can only be gained by the interrogation of nature, his doctrine of human life and action, and his judgment of the age in which he lived. The political sonnets fall into two groups— those which discuss royalty, nobility, and the sovereignty of the people, and those which treat of the several European states. The prophetic sonnets seem to have been suggested by the misery and corruption of Italy, and express the poet’s belief in the speedy triumph of right and reason. It is here too that his astrological opinions are most clearly manifested; for Campanella was far from having outgrown the belief in planetary influences. Indeed, his own metaphysical speculations, involving the principle of immanent vitality in the material universe, gave a new value to the dreams of the astrologers. Among the personal sonnets may be placed those which refer immediately to his own sufferings in prison, to his friendships, and to the ideal of the philosophic character.
I have thought it best, while indicating this fourfold division, to preserve the order adopted by Adami, since each of the reprints accessible to modern readers—both that of Orelli and that of D’Ancona— maintains the arrangement of the editio princeps. Two sonnets of the prophetic group I have omitted, partly because they have no bearing on the world as it exists for us at present, and partly because they are too studiously obscure for profitable reproduction.[13] As in the case of Michael Angelo, so also in that of Campanella, I have left the Canzoni untouched, except by way of illustration in the notes appended to my volume. They are important and voluminous enough to form a separate book; nor do they seem to me so well adapted as the sonnets for translation into English.
To give reasons for my choice of certain readings in the case of either Michael Angelo’s or Campanella’s text; to explain why I have sometimes preferred a strictly literal and sometimes a more paraphrastic rendering; or to set forth my views in detail regarding the compromises which are necessary in translation, and which must vary according to the exigencies of each successive problem offered by the original, would occupy too much space. Where I have thought it absolutely necessary, I have referred to such points in my notes. It is enough here to remark that the difficulties presented to the translator by Michael Angelo and by Campanella are of different kinds. Both, indeed, pack their thoughts so closely that it is not easy to reproduce them without either awkwardness or sacrifice of matter. But while Campanella is difficult from the abruptness of his transitions and the violence of his phrases, Michael Angelo has the obscurity of a writer whose thoughts exceed his power of expression, and who complicates the verbal form by his endeavour to project what cannot easily be said in verse.[14] A little patience will generally make it clear what Campanella meant, except in cases where the text itself is corrupt. But it may sometimes be doubted whether Michael Angelo could himself have done more than indicate the general drift of his thought, or have disengaged his own conception from the tangled skein of elliptical and ungrammatical sentences in which he has enveloped it. The form of Campanella’s poetry, though often grotesque, is always clear. Michael Angelo has left too many of his compositions in the same state as his marbles—unfinished and colossal abbozzi, which lack the final touches to make their outlines distinct. Under these circumstances, it can hardly happen that the translator should succeed in reproducing all the sharpness and vivacity of Campanella’s style, or should wholly refrain from softening, simplifying, and prettifying Michael Angelo in his attempt to produce an intelligible version. In both cases he is tempted to make his translation serve the purpose also of a commentary, and has to exercise caution and self-control lest he impose a sense too narrow or too definite upon the original.
So far as this was possible, I have adhered to the rhyming structure of my originals, feeling that this is a point of no small moment in translation. Yet when the choice lay between a sacrifice of metrical exactitude and a sacrifice of sense, I have not hesitated to prefer the former, especially in dealing with Campanella’s quatrains.
Michael Angelo and Campanella follow different rules in their treatment of the triplets. Michael Angelo allows himself three rhymes, while Campanella usually confines himself to two. My practice has been to study in each sonnet the cadence both of thought and diction, so as to satisfy an English ear, accustomed to the various forms of termination exemplified by Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Rossetti—the sweetest, the most sublime, the least artificial, and the most artful sonnet-writers in our language.
The short titles attached to each sonnet are intended to help the eye, rather than to guide the understanding of the reader. Michael Angelo and his editors supply no arguments or mottoes for his poems; while those printed by Adami in his edition of Campanella are, like mine, meant obviously to serve as signposts to the student. It may savour of impudence to ticket and to label little masterpieces, each one of which, like all good poems, is a microcosm of very varied meanings. Yet I have some authority in modern times for this impertinence; and, when it is acknowledged that the titles merely profess to guide the reader through a labyrinth of abstract and reflective compositions, without attempting to supply him with a comprehensive argument or to dogmatise concerning the main drift of each poem, I trust that enough will have been said by way of self-defence against the charge of arrogance.
The sonnet prefixed as a proem to the whole book is generally attributed to Giordano Bruno, in whose Dialogue on the Eroici Furori it occurs. There seems, however, good reason to suppose that it was really written by Tansillo, who recites it in that Dialogue. Whoever may have been its author, it expresses in noble and impassioned verse the sense of danger, the audacity, and the exultation of those pioneers of modern thought, for whom philosophy was a voyage of discovery into untravelled regions. Its spirit is rather that of Campanella than of Michael Angelo. Yet the elevation at which Michael Angelo habitually lived in thought and feeling was so far above the plains of common life, that from the summit of his solitary watch-tower he might have followed even such high-fliers as Bruno or as Campanella in their Icarian excursions with the eyes of speculative interest.
DAVOS PLATZ. Nov. 1877.
[1] ’Le Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pittore, Scultore e Architetto, cavate dagli Autografi e pubblicate da Cesare Guasti, Accademico della Crusca. In Firenze, per Felice le Monmer. MDCCCLXIII.’
[2] See, however, page xlvii of Signor Guasti’s Discorso.
[3] I have so fully expressed my admiration for Signor Guasti’s edition in the text that I may allow myself to point out in a note what seems to me its chief defect, and why I think there is still, perhaps, room for another and more critical edition. The materials are amply and conscientiously supplied by Signor Guasti, indeed, I suppose we are justified in believing that his single volume reproduces all the extant manuscript authorities, with the exception, perhaps, of the British Museum Codex. But, while it is so comprehensive, we are still left in some doubt as to the preference of one reading rather than another in the large type text presented to us as the final version of each composition. It is true that when this was possible, Signor Guasti invariably selected one of the autographs, that is, a copy in
[4] As far as I am aware, no complete translation of Michael Angelo’s sonnets has hitherto been made in English. The specimens produced by Southey, Wordsworth, Harford, Longfellow, and Mr. Taylor, moreover, render Michelangelo’s rifacimento.
[5] ’Lezione di Benedetto Varchi sopra il sottoscritto Sonetto di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, fatta da lui pubblicamente nella Accademia Fiorentina la Seconda Domenica di Quaresima l’anno MDXLVI.’ The sonnet commented by Varchi is Guasti’s No xv.
[6] I have elsewhere recorded my disagreement with Signer Guasti and Signer Gotti, and my reasons for thinking that Vaichi and Michelangelo the younger were right in assuming that the sonnets addressed to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri (especially xxx, xxxi, lii) expressed the poet’s admiration for masculine beauty. See ‘Renaissance in Italy, Fine Arts,’ pp. 521, 522. At the same time, though I agree with Buonarroti’s first editor in believing that a few of the sonnets ’risguardano, come si conosce chiaramente, amor platonico virile,’ I quite admit—as what student of early Italian poetry will not admit?—that a woman is generally intended under the title of ‘Signore’ and ‘amico.’
[7] Ridurle is his own phrase. He also speaks of trasmutare and risoluzione to explain the changes he effected.
[8] See Guasti’s ‘Discorso,’ p. xliv.
[9] See in particular ’Orazioni Tie in Salmodia Metafisicale ... Canzone Prima ... Madrigale iii;’ and ’A Berillo, Canzone di Pentimento, Madrigale ii.’
[10] ‘De Libras Proprus,’ I 3, quoted by Orelli and Alessandro d’Ancona. ‘Opere di Tommaso Campanella,’ vol. I. p 3.
[11] ‘Opere di Tommaso Campanella,’ vol. I p. ccci.
[12] Campanella’s own poetry justified this curious nom de plume adopted for him by his editor. See in particular ’Salmodia Metafisicale,’ canzone terza, madrigale ix.
’Tre canzon, nate a
un parto
Da questa mia settimontana
testa,
Al suon dolente di pensosa
squilla.’
[13] These are the sonnets entitled by Adami ’La detta Congiunzione cade nella revoluzione della Nativita di Cristo,’ and ’Sonetto cavato dall’ Apocalisse e Santa Brigida,’ D’Ancona, vol. 1. pp. 97, 98.
[14] In this respect rifacimento of 1623 has greater literary merits— the merits of mere smoothness, clearness, grammatical coherence, and intelligibility—than the autograph; and I can understand the preference of some students for the former, though I do not share it Michelangelo the younger added fluency and grace to his great-uncle’s composition by the sacrifice of much that is most characteristic, and by the omission of much that is profound and vigorous and weighty.
THE PHILOSOPHIC FLIGHT.
Poi che spiegate.
Now that these wings to speed
my wish ascend,
The more I feel vast air beneath my feet,
The more toward boundless air on pinions
fleet,
Spurning the earth, soaring to heaven, I
tend:
Nor makes them stoop their flight the direful
end
Of Daedal’s son; but upward still they
beat:—
What life the while with my life can compete,
Though dead to earth at last I shall descend?
My own heart’s voice in the void air I
hear:
Where wilt thou bear me, O rash man?
Recall
Thy daring will! This boldness waits
on fear!
Dread not, I answer, that tremendous fall:
Strike through the clouds, and smile when
death is near,
If death so glorious be our doom at all!
OF
ON DANTE ALIGHIERI.
Dal ciel discese.
From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay
The realms of justice and
of mercy trod,
Then rose a living man to
gaze on God,
That he might make the truth
as clear as day.
For that pure star that brightened with his ray
The undeserving nest where
I was born,
The whole wide world would
be a prize to scorn;
None but his Maker can due
guerdon pay.
I speak of Dante, whose high work remains
Unknown, unhonoured by that
thankless brood,
Who only to just men deny
their wage.
Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,
Against his exile coupled
with his good
I’d gladly change the
world’s best heritage!
ON DANTE ALIGHIERI.
Quante dirne si de’.
No tongue can tell of him what should be told,
For on blind eyes his splendour
shines too strong;
’Twere easier to blame
those who wrought him wrong,
Than sound his least praise
with a mouth of gold.
He to explore the place of pain was bold,
Then soared to God, to teach
our souls by song;
The gates heaven oped to bear
his feet along,
Against his just desire his
country rolled.
Thankless I call her, and to her own pain
The nurse of fell mischance;
for sign take this,
That ever to the best she
deals more scorn:
Among a thousand proofs let one remain;
Though ne’er was fortune
more unjust than his,
His equal or his better ne’er
was born.
TO POPE JULIUS II.
Signor, se vero e.
My Lord! if ever ancient saw spake sooth,
Hear this which saith:
Who can, doth never will.
Lo! thou hast lent thine ear
to fables still,
Rewarding those who hate the
name of truth.
I am thy drudge and have been from my youth—
Thine, like the rays which
the sun’s circle fill;
Yet of my dear time’s
waste thou think’st no ill:
The more I toil, the less
I move thy ruth.
Once ’twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
But ’tis the balance
and the powerful sword
Of Justice, not false Echo,
that we need.
Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
Here on the earth, if this
be our reward—
To seek for fruit on trees
too dry to breed.
ON ROME IN THE PONTIFICATE OF JULIUS II.
Qua si fa elmi.
Here helms and swords are made of chalices:
The blood of Christ is sold
so much the quart:
His cross and thorns are spears
and shields; and short
Must be the time ere even
his patience cease.
Nay let him come no more to raise the fees
Of this foul sacrilege beyond
report!
For Rome still flays and sells
him at the court,
Where paths are closed to
virtue’s fair increase.
Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure!
Seeing that work and gain
are gone; while he
Who wears the robe, is my
Medusa still.
God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure:
But of that better life what
hope have we,
When the blessed banner leads
to nought but ill?
TO GIOVANNI DA PISTOJA.
ON THE PAINTING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL.
I’ ho gia fatto un gozzo.
I’ve grown a goitre by dwelling in this den—
As cats from stagnant streams
in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they
hap to be—
Which drives the belly close
beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my
breast-bone visibly
Grows like a harp: a
rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops
thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper
bears my weight;
My feet unguided wander to
and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more
taut and strait;
Crosswise I strain me like
a Syrian bow:
Whence
false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting
brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that
bends awry.
Come
then, Giovanni, try
To succour my dead pictures
and my fame;
Since foul I fare and painting
is my shame.
INVECTIVE AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF PISTOJA.
I’ l’ ho, vostra merce.
I’ve gotten it, thanks to your courtesy;
And I have read it twenty
times or so:
Thus much may your sharp snarling
profit you,
As food our flesh filled to
satiety.
After I left you, I could plainly see
How Cain was of your ancestors:
I know
You do not shame his lineage,
for lo,
Your brother’s good
still seems your injury.
Envious you are, and proud, and foes to heaven;
Love of your neighbour still
you loathe and hate,
And only seek what must your
ruin be.
If to Pistoja Dante’s curse was given,
Bear that in mind! Enough!
But if you prate
Praises of Florence, ’tis
to wheedle me.
A
priceless jewel she:
Doubtless: but this you cannot understand:
For pigmy virtue grasps not aught so grand.
TO LUIGI DEL RICCIO.
Nel dolce d’ una.
It happens that the sweet unfathomed sea
Of seeming courtesy sometimes
doth hide
Offence to life and honour.
This descried,
I hold less dear the health
restored to me.
He who lends wings of hope, while secretly
He spreads a traitorous snare
by the wayside,
Hath dulled the flame of love,
and mortified
Friendship where friendship
burns most fervently.
Keep then, my dear Luigi, clear and pure
That ancient love to which
my life I owe,
That neither wind nor storm
its calm may mar.
For wrath and pain our gratitude obscure;
And if the truest truth of
love I know,
One pang outweighs a thousand
pleasures far.
TO LUIGI DEL RICCIO,
AFTER THE DEATH OF CECCHINO BRACCI.
A pena prima.
Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes
Which to your living eyes
were life and light,
When closed at last in death’s
injurious night
He opened them on God in Paradise.
I know it and I weep, too late made wise:
Yet was the fault not mine;
for death’s fell spite
Robbed my desire of that supreme
delight,
Which in your better memory
never dies.
Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine
To make unique Cecchino smile
in stone
For ever, now that earth hath
made him dim,
If the beloved within the lover shine,
Since art without him cannot
work alone,
You must I carve to tell the
world of him.
THANKS FOR A GIFT.
Al zucchero, alla mula.
The sugar, candles, and the saddled mule,
Together with your cask of
malvoisie,
So far exceed all my necessity
That Michael and not I my
debt must rule,
In such a glassy calm the breezes fool
My sinking sails, so that
amid the sea
My bark hath missed her way,
and seems to be
A wisp of straw whirled on
a weltering pool.
To yield thee gift for gift and grace for grace,
For food and drink and carriage
to and fro,
For all my need in every time
and place,
O my dear lord, matched with the much I owe,
All that I am were no real
recompense:
Paying a debt is not munificence.
TO GANDOLFO PORRINO.
ON HIS MISTRESS FAUSTINA MANCINA.
La nuova alta belta.
That new transcendent fair who seems to be
Peerless in heaven as in this
world of woe,
(The common folk, too blind
her worth to know
And worship, called her Left
Arm wantonly),
Was made, full well I know, for only thee:
Nor could I carve or paint
the glorious show
Of that fair face: to
life thou needs must go,
To gain the favour thou dost
crave of me.
If like the sun each star of heaven outshining,
She conquers and outsoars
our soaring thought,
This bids thee rate her worth
at its real price.
Therefore to satisfy thy ceaseless pining,
Once more in heaven hath God
her beauty wrought:
God and not I can people Paradise.
TO GIORGIO VASARI.
ON THE LIVES OF THE PAINTERS.
Se con lo stile.
With pencil and with palette hitherto
You made your art high Nature’s
paragon;
Nay more, from Nature her
own prize you won,
Making what she made fair
more fair to view.
Now that your learned hand with labour new
Of pen and ink a worthier
work hath done,
What erst you lacked, what
still remained her own,
TO VITTORIA COLONNA.
A MATCHLESS COURTESY.
Felice spirto.
Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness
Quickenest my heart so old
and near to die,
Who mid thy joys on me dost
bend an eye
Though many nobler men around
thee press!
As thou wert erewhile wont my sight to bless,
So to console my mind thou
now dost fly;
Hope therefore stills the
pangs of memory,
Which coupled with desire
my soul distress.
So finding in thee grace to plead for me—
Thy thoughts for me sunk in
so sad a case—
He who now writes, returns
thee thanks for these.
Lo, it were foul and monstrous usury
To send thee ugliest paintings
in the place
Of thy fair spirit’s
living phantasies.
TO VITTORIA COLONNA.
BRAZEN GIFTS FOR GOLDEN.
Per esser manco almen.
Seeking at least to be not all unfit
For thy sublime and boundless
courtesy,
My lowly thoughts at first
were fain to try
What they could yield for
grace so infinite.
But now I know my unassisted wit
Is all too weak to make me
soar so high;
For pardon, lady, for this
fault I cry,
And wiser still I grow remembering
it.
Yea, well I see what folly ’twere to think
That largess dropped from
thee like dews from heaven
Could e’er be paid by
work so frail as mine!
To nothingness my art and talent sink;
He fails who from his mortal
stores hath given
A thousandfold to match one
gift divine.
FIRST READING.
TO VITTORIA COLONNA.
THE MODEL AND THE STATUE.
Da che concetto.
When divine Art conceives a form and face,
She bids the craftsman for
his first essay
To shape a simple model in
mere clay:
This is the earliest birth
of Art’s embrace.
From the live marble in the second place
His mallet brings into the
light of day
A thing so beautiful that
who can say
When time shall conquer that
immortal grace?
Thus my own model I was born to be—
The model of that nobler self,
whereto
Schooled by your pity, lady,
I shall grow.
Each overplus and each deficiency
You will make good. What
penance then is due
For my fierce heat, chastened
and taught by you?
SECOND READING.
To VITTORIA COLONNA.
THE MODEL AND THE STATUE.
Se ben concetto.
When that which is divine in us doth try
To shape a face, both brain
and hand unite
To give, from a mere model
frail and slight,
Life to the stone by Art’s
free energy.
Thus too before the painter dares to ply
Paint-brush or canvas, he
is wont to write
Sketches on scraps of paper,
and invite
Wise minds to judge his figured
history.
So, born a model rude and mean to be
Of my poor self, I gain a
nobler birth,
Lady, from you, you fountain
of all worth!
Each overplus and each deficiency
You will make good. What
penance then is due
For my fierce heat, chastened
and taught by you?
THE LOVER AND THE SCULPTOR.
Non ha l’ ottimo artista.
The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its
superfluous shell
Doth not include: to
break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves
the brain can do.
The ill I shun, the good I seek, even so
In thee, fair lady, proud,
ineffable,
Lies hidden: but the
art I wield so well
Works adverse to my wish,
and lays me low.
Therefore not love, nor thy transcendent face,
Nor cruelty, nor fortune,
nor disdain,
Cause my mischance, nor fate,
nor destiny;
Since in thy heart thou carriest death and grace
Enclosed together, and my
worthless brain
Can draw forth only death
to feed on me.
LOVE AND ART.
Si come nella penna.
As pen and ink alike serve him who sings
In high or low or intermediate
style;
As the same stone hath shapes
both rich and vile
To match the fancies that
each master brings;
So, my loved lord, within thy bosom springs
Pride mixed with meekness
and kind thoughts that smile:
Whence I draw nought, my sad
self to beguile,
But what my face shows—dark
imaginings.
He who for seed sows sorrow, tears, and sighs,
(The dews that fall from heaven,
though pure and clear,
From different germs take
divers qualities)
Must needs reap grief and garner weeping eyes;
And he who looks on beauty
with sad cheer,
Gains doubtful hope and certain
miseries.
THE ARTIST AND HIS WORK.
Com’ esser, donna, puo.
How can that be, lady, which all men learn
By long experience? Shapes
that seem alive,
Wrought in hard mountain marble,
will survive
Their maker, whom the years
to dust return!
Thus to effect cause yields. Art hath her turn,
And triumphs over Nature.
BEAUTY AND THE ARTIST.
Al cor di zolfo.
A heart of flaming sulphur, flesh of tow,
Bones of dry wood, a soul
without a guide
To curb the fiery will, the
ruffling pride
Of fierce desires that from
the passions flow;
A sightless mind that weak and lame doth go
Mid snares and pitfalls scattered
far and wide;—
What wonder if the first chance
brand applied
To fuel massed like this should
make it glow?
Add beauteous art, which, brought with us from heaven,
Will conquer nature;—so
divine a power
Belongs to him who strives
with every nerve.
If I was made for art, from childhood given
A prey for burning beauty
to devour,
I blame the mistress I was
born to serve.
THE AMULET OF LOVE.
Io mi son caro assai piu.
Far more than I was wont myself I prize:
With you within my heart I
rise in rate,
Just as a gem engraved with
delicate
Devices o’er the uncut
stone doth rise;
Or as a painted sheet exceeds in price
Each leaf left pure and in
its virgin state:
Such then am I since I was
consecrate
To be the mark for arrows
from your eyes.
Stamped with your seal I’m safe where’er
I go,
Like one who carries charms
or coat of mail
Against all dangers that his
life assail
Nor fire nor water now may work me woe;
Sight to the blind I can restore
by you,
Heal every wound, and every
loss renew.
THE GARLAND AND THE GIRDLE.
Quanta si gode, lieta.
What joy hath yon glad wreath of flowers that is
Around her golden hair so
deftly twined,
Each blossom pressing forward
from behind,
As though to be the first
her brows to kiss!
The livelong day her dress hath perfect bliss,
That now reveals her breast,
now seems to bind:
And that fair woven net of
gold refined
Rests on her cheek and throat
in happiness!
Yet still more blissful seems to me the band
Gilt at the tips, so sweetly
doth it ring
And clasp the bosom that it
serves to lace:
Yea, and the belt to such as understand,
Bound round her waist, saith:
here I’d ever cling.—
What would my arms do in that
girdle’s place?
THE SILKWORM.
D’ altrui pietoso.
Kind to the world, but to itself unkind,
A worm is born, that dying
noiselessly
Despoils itself to clothe
fair limbs, and be
In its true worth by death
alone divined.
Oh, would that I might die, for her to find
Raiment in my outworn mortality!
That, changing like the snake,
I might be free
To cast the slough wherein
I dwell confined!
Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays,
Woven and wrought into a vestment
fair,
Around her beauteous bosom
in such bliss!
All through the day she’d clasp me! Would
I were
The shoes that bear her burden!
When the ways
Were wet with rain, her feet
I then should kiss!
WAITING IN FAITH.
Se nel volto per gli occhi
If through the eyes the heart speaks clear and true,
I have no stronger sureties
than these eyes
For my pure love. Prithee
let them suffice,
Lord of my soul, pity to gain
from you.
More tenderly perchance than is my due,
Your spirit sees into my heart,
where rise
The flames of holy worship,
nor denies
The grace reserved for those
who humbly sue.
Oh, blessed day when you at last are mine!
Let time stand still, and
let noon’s chariot stay;
Fixed be that moment on the
dial of heaven!
That I may clasp and keep, by grace divine,
Clasp in these yearning arms
and keep for aye
My heart’s loved lord
to me desertless given!
FLESH AND SPIRIT.
Ben posson gli occhi.
Well may these eyes of mine both near and far
Behold the beams that from
thy beauty flow;
But, lady, feet must halt
where sight may go:
We see, but cannot climb to
clasp a star.
The pure ethereal soul surmounts that bar
Of flesh, and soars to where
thy splendours glow,
Free through the eyes; while
prisoned here below,
Though fired with fervent
love, our bodies are.
Clogged with mortality and wingless, we
Cannot pursue an angel in
her flight:
Only to gaze exhausts our
utmost might.
Yet, if but heaven like earth incline to thee,
Let my whole body be one eye
to see,
That not one part of me may
miss thy sight!
THE DOOM OF BEAUTY.
Spirto ben nato.
Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see,
Mirrored in thy pure form
and delicate,
What beauties heaven and nature
can create,
The paragon of all their works
to be!
Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety,
Have found a home, as from
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF BEAUTY:
A DIALOGUE WITH LOVE.
Dimmi di grazia, amor.
Nay, prithee tell me, Love, when I behold
My lady, do mine eyes her
beauty see
In truth, or dwells that loveliness
in me
Which multiplies her grace
a thousandfold?
Thou needs must know; for thou with her of old
Comest to stir my soul’s
tranquillity;
Yet would I not seek one sigh
less, or be
By loss of that loved flame
more simply cold.—
The beauty thou discernest, all is hers;
But grows in radiance as it
soars on high
Through mortal eyes unto the
soul above:
’Tis there transfigured; for the soul confers
On what she holds, her own
divinity:
And this transfigured beauty
wins thy love.
JOY MAY KILL.
Non men gran grasia, donna.
Too much good luck no less than misery
May kill a man condemned to
mortal pain,
If, lost to hope and chilled
in every vein,
A sudden pardon comes to set
him free.
Thus thy unwonted kindness shown to me
Amid the gloom where only
sad thoughts reign,
With too much rapture bringing
light again,
Threatens my life more than
that agony.
Good news and bad may bear the self-same knife;
And death may follow both
upon their flight;
For hearts that shrink or
swell, alike will break.
Let then thy beauty, to preserve my life,
Temper the source of this
supreme delight,
Lest joy so poignant slay
a soul so weak.
NO ESCAPE FROM LOVE.
Non posso altra figura.
I cannot by the utmost flight of thought
Conceive another form of air
or clay,
Wherewith against thy beauty
to array
My wounded heart in armour
fancy-wrought:
For, lacking thee, so low my state is brought,
That Love hath stolen all
my strength away;
Whence, when I fain would
halve my griefs, they weigh
With double sorrow, and I
sink to nought.
Thus all in vain my soul to scape thee flies,
For ever faster flies her
beauteous foe:
From the swift-footed feebly
run the slow!
Yet with his hands Love wipes my weeping eyes,
Saying, this toil will end
in happy cheer;
What costs the heart so much,
must needs be dear!
THE HEAVENLY BIRTH OF LOVE AND BEAUTY.
La vita del mie amor.
This heart of flesh feeds not with life my love:
The love wherewith I love
thee hath no heart;
Nor harbours it in any mortal
part,
Where erring thought or ill
desire may move.
When first Love sent our souls from God above,
He fashioned me to see thee
as thou art—
Pure light; and thus I find
God’s counterpart
In thy fair face, and feel
the sting thereof.
As heat from fire, from loveliness divine
The mind that worships what
recalls the sun
From whence she sprang, can
be divided never:
And since thine eyes all Paradise enshrine,
Burning unto those orbs of
light I run,
There where I loved thee first
to dwell for ever.
LOVE’S DILEMMA.
I’ mi credetti.
I deemed upon that day when first I knew
So many peerless beauties
blent in one,
That, like an eagle gazing
on the sun,
Mine eyes might fix on the
least part of you.
That dream hath vanished, and my hope is flown;
For he who fain a seraph would
pursue
Wingless, hath cast words
to the winds, and dew
On stones, and gauged God’s
reason with his own.
If then my heart cannot endure the blaze
Of beauties infinite that
blind these eyes,
Nor yet can bear to be from
you divided,
What fate is mine? Who guides or guards my ways,
Seeing my soul, so lost and
ill-betided,
Burns in your presence, in
your absence dies?
TO TOMMASO DE’ CAVALIERI.
LOVE THE LIGHT-GIVER.
Veggio co’ bei vostri occhi.
With your fair eyes a charming light I see,
For which my own blind eyes
would peer in vain;
Stayed by your feet the burden
I sustain
Which my lame feet find all
too strong for me;
Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly;
Heavenward your spirit stirreth
me to strain;
E’en as you will, I
blush and blanch again,
Freeze in the sun, burn ’neath
a frosty sky.
Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
Life to my thoughts within
your heart is given;
My words begin to breathe
upon your breath:
Like to the moon am I, that cannot shine
Alone; for lo! our eyes see
nought in heaven
Save what the living sun illumineth.
To TOMMASO DE’ CAVALIERI.
LOVE’S LORDSHIP.
A che piu debb’ io.
Why should I seek to ease intense desire
With still more tears and
windy words of grief,
When heaven, or late or soon,
sends no relief
To souls whom love hath robed
around with fire?
Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
When all must die? Nay,
death beyond belief
Unto these eyes would be both
sweet and brief,
Since in my sum of woes all
joys expire!
Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
I rather seek, say who must
rule my breast,
Gliding between her gladness
and her woe?
If only chains and bands can make me blest,
No marvel if alone and bare
I go
An armed Knight’s captive
and slave confessed.
LOVE’S EXPOSTULATION.
S’ un casto amor.
If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill,
If fortune bind both lovers
in one bond,
If either at the other’s
grief despond,
If both be governed by one
life, one will;
If in two bodies one soul triumph still,
Raising the twain from earth
to heaven beyond,
If Love with one blow and
one golden wand
Have power both smitten breasts
to pierce and thrill;
If each the other love, himself forgoing,
With such delight, such savour,
and so well,
That both to one sole end
their wills combine;
If thousands of these thoughts, all thought outgoing,
Fail the least part of their
firm love to tell:
Say, can mere angry spite
this knot untwine?
FIRST READING.
A PRAYER TO NATURE.
AMOR REDIVIVUS.
Perche tuo gran bellezze.
That thy great beauty on our earth may be
Shrined in a lady softer and
more kind,
I call on nature to collect
and bind
All those delights the slow
years steal from thee,
And save them to restore the radiancy
Of thy bright face in some
fair form designed
By heaven; and may Love ever
bear in mind
To mould her heart of grace
and courtesy.
I call on nature too to keep my sighs,
My scattered tears to take
and recombine,
And give to him who loves
that fair again:
More happy he perchance shall move those eyes
To mercy by the griefs wherewith
I pine,
Nor lose the kindness that
from me is ta’en!
SECOND READING.
A PRAYER TO NATURE.
AMOR REDIVIVUS.
Sol perche tue bellezze.
If only that thy beauties here may be
Deathless through Time that
rends the wreaths he twined,
I trust that Nature will collect
and bind
All those delights the slow
years steal from thee,
And keep them for a birth more happily
Born under better auspices,
LOVE’S FURNACE.
Si amico al freddo sasso.
So friendly is the fire to flinty stone,
That, struck therefrom and
kindled to a blaze,
It burns the stone, and from
the ash doth raise
What lives thenceforward binding
stones in one:
Kiln-hardened this resists both frost and sun,
Acquiring higher worth for
endless days—
As the purged soul from hell
returns with praise,
Amid the heavenly host to
take her throne.
E’en so the fire struck from my soul, that lay
Close-hidden in my heart,
may temper me,
Till burned and slaked to
better life I rise.
If, made mere smoke and dust, I live to-day,
Fire-hardened I shall live
eternally;
Such gold, not iron, my spirit
strikes and tries.
LOVE’S PARADOXES.
Sento d’ un foco.
Far off with fire I feel a cold face lit,
That makes me burn, the while
itself doth freeze:
Two fragile arms enchain me,
which with ease,
Unmoved themselves, can move
weights infinite.
A soul none knows but I, most exquisite,
That, deathless, deals me
death, my spirit sees:
I meet with one who, free,
my heart doth seize:
And who alone can cheer, hath
tortured it.
How can it be that from one face like thine
My own should feel effects
so contrary,
Since ill comes not from things
devoid of ill?
That loveliness perchance doth make me pine,
Even as the sun, whose fiery
beams we see,
Inflames the world, while
he is temperate still.
LOVE MISINTERPRETED.
Se l’immortal desio.
If the undying thirst that purifies
Our mortal thoughts, could
draw mine to the day,
Perchance the lord who now
holds cruel sway
In Love’s high house,
would prove more kindly-wise.
But since the laws of heaven immortalise
Our souls, and doom our flesh
to swift decay,
Tongue cannot tell how fair,
how pure as day,
Is the soul’s thirst
that far beyond it lies.
How then, ah woe is me! shall that chaste fire,
Which burns the heart within
me, be made known,
If sense finds only sense
in what it sees?
All my fair hours are turned to miseries
With my loved lord, who minds
but lies alone;
For, truth to tell, who trusts
not is a liar.
PERHAPS TO VITTORIA COLONNA.
LOVE’S SERVITUDE.
S’ alcun legato e pur.
He who is bound by some great benefit,
As to be raised from death
to life again,
How shall he recompense that
gift, or gain
Freedom from servitude so
infinite?
Yet if ’twere possible to pay the debt,
He’d lose that kindness
which we entertain
For those who serve us well;
since it is plain
That kindness needs some boon
to quicken it.
Wherefore, O lady, to maintain thy grace,
So far above my fortune, what
I bring
Is rather thanklessness than
courtesy:
For if both met as equals face to face,
She whom I love could not
be called my king;—
There is no lordship in equality.
LOVE’S VAIN EXPENSE.
Rendete a gli occhi miei.
Give back unto mine eyes, ye fount and rill,
Those streams, not yours,
that are so full and strong,
That swell your springs, and
roll your waves along
With force unwonted in your
native hill!
And thou, dense air, weighed with my sighs so chill,
That hidest heaven’s
own light thick mists among,
Give back those sighs to my
sad heart, nor wrong
My visual ray with thy dark
face of ill!
Let earth give back the footprints that I wore,
That the bare grass I spoiled
may sprout again;
And Echo, now grown deaf,
my cries return!
Loved eyes, unto mine eyes those looks restore,
And let me woo another not
in vain,
Since how to please thee I
shall never learn!
LOVE’S ARGUMENT WITH REASON.
La ragion meco si lamenta.
Reason laments and grieves full sore with me,
The while I hope by loving
to be blest;
With precepts sound and true
philosophy
My shame she quickens thus
within my breast:
’What else but death will that sun deal to thee—
Nor like the phoenix in her
flaming nest?’
Yet nought avails this wise
morality;
No hand can save a suicide
confessed.
I know my doom; the truth I apprehend:
But on the other side my traitorous
heart
Slays me whene’er to
wisdom’s words I bend.
Between two deaths my lady stands apart:
This death I dread; that none
can comprehend.
In this suspense body and
soul must part.
FIRST READING.
LOVE’S LOADSTONE.
No so s’ e la desiata luce.
I know not if it be the longed-for light
Of her first Maker which the
spirit feels;
Or if a time-old memory reveals
Some other beauty for the
heart’s delight;
Or fame or dreams beget that vision bright,
Sweet to the eyes, which through
the bosom steals,
Leaving I know not what that
wounds and heals,
And now perchance hath made
me weep outright.
Be this what this may be, ’tis this I seek:
Nor guide have I; nor know
I where to find
That burning fire; yet some
one seems to lead.
This, since I saw thee, lady, makes me weak;
A bitter-sweet sways here
and there my mind,
And sure I am thine eyes this
mischief breed.
SECOND READING.
LOVE’S LOADSTONE.
Non so se s’ e l’ immaginata luce.
I know not if it be the fancied light
Which every man or more or
less doth feel;
Or if the mind and memory
reveal
Some other beauty for the
heart’s delight;
Or if within the soul the vision bright
Of her celestial home once
more doth steal,
Drawing our better thoughts
with pure appeal
To the true Good above all
mortal sight:
This light I long for and unguided seek;
This fire that burns my heart,
I cannot find;
Nor know the way, though some
one seems to lead.
This, since I saw thee, lady, makes me weak:
A bitter-sweet sways here
and there my mind;
And sure I am thine eyes this
mischief breed.
LIGHT AND DARKNESS.
Colui che fece.
He who ordained, when first the world began,
Time, that was not before
creation’s hour,
Divided it, and gave the sun’s
high power
To rule the one, the moon
the other span:
Thence fate and changeful chance and fortune’s
ban
Did in one moment down on
mortals shower:
To me they portioned darkness
for a dower;
Dark hath my lot been since
I was a man.
Myself am ever mine own counterfeit;
And as deep night grows still
more dim and dun,
So still of more misdoing
must I rue:
Meanwhile this solace to my soul is sweet,
That my black night doth make
more clear the sun
Which at your birth was given
to wait on you.
SACRED NIGHT.
Ogni van chiuso.
All hollow vaults and dungeons sealed from sight,
All caverns circumscribed
with roof and wall,
Defend dark Night, though
noon around her fall,
From the fierce play of solar
day-beams bright.
But if she be assailed by fire or light,
Her powers divine are nought;
they tremble all
Before things far more vile
and trivial—
Even a glow-worm can confound
THE IMPEACHMENT OF NIGHT.
Perche Febo non torce.
What time bright Phoebus doth not stretch and bend
His shining arms around this
terrene sphere,
The people call that season
dark and drear
Night, for the cause they
do not comprehend.
So weak is Night that if our hand extend
A glimmering torch, her shadows
disappear,
Leaving her dead; like frailest
gossamere,
Tinder and steel her mantle
rive and rend.
Nay, if this Night be anything at all,
Sure she is daughter of the
sun and earth;
This holds, the other spreads
that shadowy pall.
Howbeit they err who praise this gloomy birth,
So frail and desolate and
void of mirth
That one poor firefly can
her might appal.
THE DEFENCE OF NIGHT.
O nott’ o dolce tempo.
O night, O sweet though sombre span of time!—
All things find rest upon
their journey’s end—
Whoso hath praised thee, well
doth apprehend;
And whoso honours thee, hath
wisdom’s prime.
Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime;
For dews and darkness are
of peace the friend:
Often by thee in dreams upborne,
I wend
From earth to heaven, where
yet I hope to climb.
Thou shade of Death, through whom the soul at length
Shuns pain and sadness hostile
to the heart,
Whom mourners find their last
and sure relief!
Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength,
Driest our tears, assuagest
every smart,
Purging the spirits of the
pure from grief.
LOVE FEEDS THE FLAME OF AGE.
Quand’ il servo il signior.
When masters bind a slave with cruel chain,
And keep him hope-forlorn
in bondage pent,
Use tames his temper to imprisonment,
And hardly would he fain be
free again.
Use curbs the snake and tiger, and doth train
Fierce woodland lions to bear
chastisement;
And the young artist, all
with toil forspent,
By constant use a giant’s
strength doth gain
But with the force of flame it is not so:
For while fire sucks the sap
of the green wood,
It warms a frore old man and
makes him grow;
With such fine heat of youth and lustihood
Filling his heart and teaching
it to glow,
That love enfolds him with
beatitude.
If
then in playful mood
LOVE’S FLAME DOTH FEED ON AGE.
Se da’ prim’ anni.
If some mild heat of love in youth confessed
Burns a fresh heart with swift
consuming fire,
What will the force be of
a flame more dire
Shut up within an old man’s
cindery breast?
If the mere lapse of lengthening years hath pressed
So sorely that life, strength,
and vigour tire,
How shall he fare who must
ere long expire,
When to old age is added love’s
unrest?
Weak as myself, he will be whirled away
Like dust by winds kind in
their cruelty,
Robbing the loathly worm of
its last prey.
A little flame consumed and fed on me
In my green age: now
that the wood is dry,
What hope against this fire
more fierce have I?
BEAUTY’S INTOLERABLE SPLENDOUR.
Se ’l foco alla bellezza.
If but the fire that lightens in thine eyes
Were equal with their beauty,
all the snow
And frost of all the world
would melt and glow
Like brands that blaze beneath
fierce tropic skies.
But heaven in mercy to our miseries
Dulls and divides the fiery
beams that flow
From thy great loveliness,
that we may go
Through this stern mortal
life in tranquil wise.
Thus beauty burns not with consuming rage;
For so much only of the heavenly
light
Inflames our love as finds
a fervent heart.
This is my case, lady, in sad old age:
If seeing thee, I do not die
outright,
’Tis that I feel thy
beauty but in part.
LOVE’S EVENING.
Se ’l troppo indugio.
What though long waiting wins more happiness
Than petulant desire is wont
to gain,
My luck in latest age hath
brought me pain,
Thinking how brief must be
an old man’s bliss.
Heaven, if it heed our lives, can hardly bless
This fire of love when frosts
are wont to reign:
For so I love thee, lady,
and my strain
Of tears through age exceeds
in tenderness.
Yet peradventure though my day is done,—
Though nearly past the setting
mid thick cloud
And frozen exhalations sinks
my sun,—
If love to only mid-day be allowed,
And I an old man in my evening
burn,
You, lady, still my night
to noon may turn.
LOVE’S EXCUSE.
Dal dolcie pianto.
From happy tears to woeful smiles, from peace
Eternal to a brief and hollow
truce,
How have I fallen!—when
’tis truth we lose,
Sense triumphs o’er
all adverse impulses.
I know not if my heart bred this disease,
That still more pleasing grows
with growing use;
Or else thy face, thine eyes,
which stole the hues
And fires of Paradise—less
fair than these.
Thy beauty is no mortal thing; ’twas sent
From heaven on high to make
our earth divine:
Wherefore, though wasting,
burning, I’m content;
For in thy sight what could I do but pine?
If God himself thus rules
my destiny,
Who, when I die, can lay the
blame on thee?
IN LOVE’S OWN TIME.
S’ i’ avessi creduto.
Had I but earlier known that from the eyes
Of that bright soul that fires
me like the sun,
I might have drawn new strength
my race to run,
Burning as burns the phoenix
ere it dies;
Even as the stag or lynx or leopard flies
To seek his pleasure and his
pain to shun,
Each word, each smile of her
would I have won,
Flying where now sad age all
flight denies.
Yet why complain? For even now I find
In that glad angel’s
face, so full of rest,
Health and content, heart’s
ease and peace of mind
Perchance I might have been less simply blest,
Finding her sooner: if
’tis age alone
That lets me soar with her
to seek God’s throne.
FIRST READING.
LOVE IN YOUTH AND AGE.
Tornami al tempo.
Bring back the time when blind desire ran free,
With bit and rein too loose
to curb his flight;
Give back the buried face,
once angel-bright,
That hides in earth all comely
things from me;
Bring back those journeys ta’en so toilsomely,
So toilsome-slow to one whose
hairs are white;
Those tears and flames that
in one breast unite;
If thou wilt once more take
thy fill of me!
Yet Love! Suppose it true that thou dost thrive
Only on bitter honey-dews
of tears.
Small profit hast thou of
a weak old man.
My soul that toward the other shore doth strive,
Wards off thy darts with shafts
of holier fears;
And fire feeds ill on brands
no breath can fan.
SECOND READING.
LOVE IN YOUTH AND AGE.
Tornami al tempo.
Bring back the time when glad desire ran free
With bit and rein too loose
to curb his flight,
The tears and flames that
in one breast unite,
If thou art fain once more
to conquer me!
Bring back those journeys ta’en so toilsomely,
So toilsome-slow to him whose
hairs are white!
CELESTIAL LOVE.
Non vider gli occhi miei.
I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes
When perfect peace in thy
fair eyes I found;
But far within, where all
is holy ground,
My soul felt Love, her comrade
of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Else should we still to transient
loves be bound;
But, finding these so false,
we pass beyond
Unto the Love of Loves that
never dies.
Nay, things that die, cannot assuage the thirst
Of souls undying; nor Eternity
Serves Time, where all must
fade that flourisheth.
Sense is not love, but lawlessness accurst:
This kills the soul; while
our love lifts on high
Our friends on earth—higher
in heaven through death.
CELESTIAL AND EARTHLY LOVE.
Non e sempre di colpa.
Love is not always harsh and deadly sin:
If it be love of loveliness
divine,
It leaves the heart all soft
and infantine
For rays of God’s own
grace to enter in.
Love fits the soul with wings, and bids her win
Her flight aloft nor e’er
to earth decline;
’Tis the first step
that leads her to the shrine
Of Him who slakes the thirst
that burns within.
The love of that whereof I speak, ascends:
Woman is different far; the
love of her
But ill befits a heart all
manly wise.
The one love soars, the other downward tends;
The soul lights this, while
that the senses stir,
And still his arrow at base
quarry flies.
LOVE LIFTS TO GOD.
Veggio nel tuo bel viso.
From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
That which no mortal tongue
can rightly say;
The soul, imprisoned in her
house of clay,
Holpen by thee to God hath
often soared:
And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
Attribute what their grosser
wills obey,
Yet shall this fervent homage
that I pay,
This love, this faith, pure
joys for us afford.
Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
Resemble for the soul that
rightly sees,
That source of bliss divine
which gave us birth:
Nor have we first-fruits or remembrances
Of heaven elsewhere.
Thus, loving loyally,
I rise to God and make death
sweet by thee.
LOVE’S ENTREATY.
Tu sa’ ch’ i’ so, Signor mie.
Thou knowest, love, I know that thou dost know
That I am here more near to
thee to be,
And knowest that I know thou
knowest me:
What means it then that we
are sundered so?
If they are true, these hopes that from thee flow,
If it is real, this sweet
expectancy,
Break down the wall that stands
’twixt me and thee;
For pain in prison pent hath
double woe.
Because in thee I love, O my loved lord,
What thou best lovest, be
not therefore stern:
Souls burn for souls, spirits
to spirits cry!
I seek the splendour in thy fair face stored;
Yet living man that beauty
scarce can learn,
And he who fain would find
it, first must die.
FIRST READING.
HEAVEN-BORN BEAUTY.
Per ritornar la.
As one who will reseek her home of light,
Thy form immortal to this
prison-house
Descended, like an angel piteous,
To heal all hearts and make
the whole world bright.
’Tis this that thralls my soul in love’s
delight,
Not thy clear face of beauty
glorious;
For he who harbours virtue,
still will choose
To love what neither years
nor death can blight.
So fares it ever with things high and rare
Wrought in the sweat of nature;
heaven above
Showers on their birth the
blessings of her prime:
Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
More clearly than in human
forms sublime;
Which, since they image Him,
alone I love.
SECOND READING.
HEAVEN-BORN BEAUTY.
Venne, non so ben donde.
It came, I know not whence, from far above,
That clear immortal flame
that still doth rise
Within thy sacred breast,
and fills the skies,
And heals all hearts, and
adds to heaven new love.
This burns me, this, and the pure light thereof;
Not thy fair face, thy sweet
untroubled eyes:
For love that is not love
for aught that dies,
Dwells in the soul where no
base passions move.
If then such loveliness upon its own
Should graft new beauties
in a mortal birth,
The sheath bespeaks the shining
blade within.
To gain our love God hath not clearer shown
Himself elsewhere: thus
heaven doth vie with earth
To make thee worthy worship
without sin.
FIRST READING.
CARNAL AND SPIRITUAL LOVE.
Passa per gli occhi.
Swift through the eyes unto the heart within
All lovely forms that thrall
our spirit stray;
So smooth and broad and open
is the way
That thousands and not hundreds
enter in.
Burdened with scruples and weighed down with sin,
These mortal beauties fill
me with dismay;
Nor find I one that doth not
strive to stay
My soul on transient joy,
or lets me win
The heaven I yearn for. Lo, when erring love—
Who fills the world, howe’er
his power we shun,
Else were the world a grave
and we undone—
Assails the soul, if grace refuse to fan
Our purged desires and make
them soar above,
What grief it were to have
been born a man!
SECOND READING.
CARNAL AND SPIRITUAL LOVE.
Passa per gli occhi.
Swift through the eyes unto the heart within
All lovely forms that thrall
our spirit stray;
So smooth and broad and open
is the way
That thousands and not hundreds
enter in
Of every age and sex: whence I begin,
Burdened with griefs, but
more with dull dismay,
To fear; nor find mid all
their bright array
One that with full content
my heart may win.
If mortal beauty be the food of love,
It came not with the soul
from heaven, and thus
That love itself must be a
mortal fire:
But if love reach to nobler hopes above,
Thy love shall scorn me not
nor dread desire
That seeks a carnal prey assailing
us.
LOVE AND DEATH.
Ognor che l’ idol mio.
Whene’er the idol of these eyes appears
Unto my musing heart so weak
and strong,
Death comes between her and
my soul ere long
Chasing her thence with troops
of gathering fears.
Nathless this violence my spirit cheers
With better hope than if she
had no wrong;
While Love invincible arrays
the throng
Of dauntless thoughts, and
thus harangues his peers:
But once, he argues, can a mortal die;
But once be born: and
he who dies afire,
What shall he gain if erst
he dwelt with me?
That burning love whereby the soul flies free,
Doth lure each fervent spirit
to aspire
Like gold refined in flame
to God on high.
LOVE IS A REFINER’S FIRE.
Non piu ch’ ’l foco il fabbro.
It is with fire that blacksmiths iron subdue
Unto fair form, the image
of their thought:
Nor without fire hath any
artist wrought
Gold to its utmost purity
of hue.
Nay, nor the unmatched phoenix lives anew,
Unless she burn: if then
I am distraught
By fire, I may to better life
be brought
Like those whom death restores
FIRST READING.
LOVE’S JUSTIFICATION.
Ben puo talor col mio.
Sometimes my love I dare to entertain
With soaring hope not over-credulous;
Since if all human loves were
impious,
Unto what end did God the
world ordain?
For loving thee what license is more plain
Than that I praise thereby
the glorious
Source of all joys divine,
that comfort us
In thee, and with chaste fires
our soul sustain?
False hope belongs unto that love alone
Which with declining beauty
wanes and dies,
And, like the face it worships,
fades away.
That hope is true which the pure heart hath known,
Which alters not with time
or death’s decay,
Yielding on earth earnest
of Paradise.
SECOND READING.
LOVE’S JUSTIFICATION.
Ben puo talor col casto.
It must be right sometimes to entertain
Chaste love with hope not
over-credulous;
Since if all human loves were
impious,
Unto what end did God the
world ordain?
If I love thee and bend beneath thy reign,
’Tis for the sake of
beauty glorious
Which in thine eyes divine
is stored for us,
And drives all evil thought
from its domain.
That is not love whose tyranny we own
In loveliness that every moment
dies;
Which, like the face it worships,
fades away:
True love is that which the pure heart hath known,
Which alters not with time
or death’s decay,
Yielding on earth earnest
of Paradise.
AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA.
IRREPARABLE LOSS.
Se ’l mie rozzo martello.
When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
Gives human shape, now that,
now this, at will,
Following his hand who wields
and guides it still,
It moves upon another’s
feet alone:
But that which dwells in heaven, the world doth fill
With beauty by pure motions
of its own;
And since tools fashion tools
which else were none,
Its life makes all that lives
with living skill.
Now, for that every stroke excels the more
The higher at the forge it
doth ascend,
Her soul that fashioned mine
hath sought the skies:
Wherefore unfinished I must meet my end,
If God, the great artificer,
denies
That aid which was unique
on earth before.
AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA.
LOVE’S TRIUMPH OVER DEATH.
Quand’ el ministro de’ sospir.
When she who was the source of all my sighs,
Fled from the world, herself,
my straining sight,
Nature who gave us that unique
delight,
Was sunk in shame, and we
had weeping eyes.
Yet shall not vauntful Death enjoy this prize,
This sun of suns which then
he veiled in night;
For Love hath triumphed, lifting
up her light
On earth and mid the saints
in Paradise.
What though remorseless and impiteous doom
Deemed that the music of her
deeds would die,
And that her splendour would
be sunk in gloom,
The poet’s page exalts her to the sky
With life more living in the
lifeless tomb,
And death translates her soul
to reign on high.
AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA.
AFTER SUNSET.
Be’ mi dove’.
Well might I in those days so fortunate,
What time the sun lightened
my path above,
Have soared from earth to
heaven, raised by her love
Who winged my labouring soul
and sweetened fate.
That sun hath set; and I with hope elate
Who deemed that those bright
days would never move,
Find that my thankless soul,
deprived thereof,
Declines to death, while heaven
still bars the gate.
Love lent me wings; my path was like a stair;
A lamp unto my feet, that
sun was given;
And death was safety and great
joy to find.
But dying now, I shall not climb to heaven;
Nor can mere memory cheer
my heart’s despair:—
What help remains when hope
is left behind?
AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA.
A WASTED BRAND.
Qual maraviglia e.
If being near the fire I burned with it,
Now that its flame is quenched
and doth not show,
What wonder if I waste within
and glow,
Dwindling away to cinders
bit by bit?
While still it burned, I saw so brightly lit
That splendour whence I drew
my grievous woe,
That from its sight alone
could pleasure flow,
And death and torment both
seemed exquisite.
But now that heaven hath robbed me of the blaze
Of that great fire which burned
and nourished me,
A coal that smoulders ’neath
the ash am I.
Unless Love furnish wood fresh flames to raise,
I shall expire with not one
spark to see,
So quickly into embers do
I die!
TO GIORGIO VASARI.
ON THE BRINK OF DEATH.
Giunto e gia.
Now hath my life across a stormy sea
Like a frail bark reached
that wide port where all
Are bidden, ere the final
reckoning fall
Of good and evil for eternity.
Now know I well how that fond phantasy
Which made my soul the worshipper
and thrall
Of earthly art, is vain; how
criminal
Is that which all men seek
unwillingly.
Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed,
What are they when the double
death is nigh?
The one I know for sure, the
other dread.
Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul that turns to His
great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on
the cross were spread.
TO GIORGIO VASARI.
VANITY OF VANITIES.
Le favole del mondo.
The fables of the world have filched away
The time I had for thinking
upon God;
His grace lies buried ’neath
oblivion’s sod,
Whence springs an evil crop
of sins alway.
What makes another wise, leads me astray,
Slow to discern the bad path
I have trod:
Hope fades; but still desire
ascends that God
May free me from self-love,
my sure decay.
Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth!
Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way
rise,
Unless Thou help me on this
pilgrimage.
Teach me to hate the world so little worth,
And all the lovely things
I clasp and prize;
That endless life, ere death,
may be my wage.
A PRAYER FOR FAITH.
Non e piu bassa.
There’s not on earth a thing more vile and base
Than, lacking Thee, I feel
myself to be:
For pardon prays my own debility,
Yearning in vain to lift me
to Thy face.
Stretch to me, Lord, that chain whose links enlace
All heavenly gifts and all
felicity—
Faith, whereunto I strive
perpetually,
Yet cannot find (my fault)
her perfect grace.
That gift of gifts, the rarer ’tis, the more
I count it great; more great,
because to earth
Without it neither peace nor
joy is given.
If Thou Thy blood so lovingly didst pour,
Let not that bounty fail or
suffer dearth,
Withholding Faith that opes
the doors of heaven.
TO MONSIGNOR LODOVICO BECCADELLI.
URBINO.
Per croce e grazia.
God’s grace, the cross,
our troubles multiplied,
Will make us meet in heaven,
full well I know:
Yet ere we yield our breath,
on earth below
Why need a little solace be
denied?
Though seas and mountains
and rough ways divide
Our feet asunder, neither
frost nor snow
Can make the soul her ancient
love forgo;
Nor chains nor bonds the wings
of thought have tied.
Borne by these wings with
thee I dwell for aye,
And weep, and of my dead Urbino
talk,
Who, were he living, now perchance
would be,
For so ’twas planned,
thy guest as well as I:
Warned by his death another
way I walk
To meet him where he waits
to live with me.
WAITING FOR DEATH.
Di morte certo.
My death must come; but when,
I do not know:
Life’s short, and little
life remains for me:
Fain would my flesh abide;
my soul would flee
Heavenward, for still she
calls on me to go.
Blind is the world; and evil
here below
O’erwhelms and triumphs
over honesty:
The light is quenched; quenched
too is bravery:
Lies reign, and truth hath
ceased her face to show.
When will that day dawn, Lord,
for which he waits
Who trusts in Thee? Lo,
this prolonged delay
Destroys all hope and robs
the soul of life.
Why streams the light from
those celestial gates,
If death prevent the day of
grace, and stay
Our souls for ever in the
toils of strife?
A PRAYER FOR STRENGTH.
Carico d’anni.
Burdened with years and full of sinfulness,
With evil custom grown inveterate,
Both deaths I dread that close
before me wait,
Yet feed my heart on poisonous
thoughts no less.
No strength I find in mine own feebleness
To change or life or love
or use or fate,
Unless Thy heavenly guidance
come, though late,
Which only helps and stays
our nothingness.
’Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn
For that celestial home, where
yet my soul
May be new made, and not,
as erst, of nought:
Nay, ere Thou strip her mortal vestment, turn
My steps toward the steep
ascent, that whole
And pure before Thy face she
may be brought.
A PRAYER FOR PURIFICATION.
Forse perche d’ altrui.
Perchance that I might learn what pity is,
That I might laugh at erring
men no more,
Secure in my own strength
as heretofore,
My soul hath fallen from her
state of bliss:
Nor know I under any flag but this
How fighting I may ’scape
those perils sore,
Or how survive the rout and
horrid roar
Of adverse hosts, if I Thy
succour miss.
O flesh! O blood! O cross! O pain extreme!
By you may those foul sins
be purified,
Wherein my fathers were, and
I was born!
Lo, Thou alone art good: let Thy supreme
Pity my state of evil cleanse
and hide—
So near to death, so far from
God, forlorn.
A PRAYER FOR AID.
Deh fammiti vedere.
Oh, make me see Thee, Lord, where’er I go!
If mortal beauty sets my soul
on fire,
That flame when near to Thine
must needs expire,
And I with love of only Thee
shall glow.
Dear Lord, Thy help I seek against this woe,
These torments that my spirit
vex and tire;
Thou only with new strength
canst re-inspire
My will, my sense, my courage
faint and low.
Thou gavest me on earth this soul divine;
And Thou within this body
weak and frail
Didst prison it—how
sadly there to live!
How can I make its lot less vile than mine?
Without Thee, Lord, all goodness
seems to fail.
To alter fate is God’s
prerogative.
AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS.
Scarco d’ un’ importuna.
Freed from a burden sore and grievous band,
Dear Lord, and from this wearying
world untied,
Like a frail bark I turn me
to Thy side,
As from a fierce storm to
a tranquil land.
Thy thorns, Thy nails, and either bleeding hand,
With Thy mild gentle piteous
face, provide
Promise of help and mercies
multiplied,
And hope that yet my soul
secure may stand.
Let not Thy holy eyes be just to see
My evil past, Thy chastened
ears to hear
And stretch the arm of judgment
to my crime:
Let Thy blood only lave and succour me,
Yielding more perfect pardon,
better cheer,
As older still I grow with
lengthening time.
FIRST READING.
A PRAYER FOR GRACE IN DEATH.
S’ avvien che spesso.
What though strong love of life doth flatter me
With hope of yet more years
on earth to stay,
Death none the less draws
nearer day by day,
Who to sad souls alone comes
lingeringly.
Yet why desire long life and jollity,
If in our griefs alone to
God we pray?
Glad fortune, length of days,
and pleasure slay
The soul that trusts to their
felicity.
Then if at any hour through grace divine
The fiery shafts of love and
faith that cheer
And fortify the soul, my heart
assail,
Since nought achieve these mortal powers of mine,
Straight may I wing my way
to heaven; for here
With lengthening days good
thoughts and wishes fail.
SECOND READING.
A PRAYER FOR GRACE IN DEATH.
Parmi che spesso.
Ofttimes my great desire doth flatter me
With hope on earth yet many
years to stay:
Still Death, the more I love
it, day by day
Takes from the life I love
so tenderly.
What better time for that dread change could be,
If in our griefs alone to
God we pray?
Oh, lead me, Lord, oh, lead
HEART-COLDNESS.
Vorrei voler, Signior.
Fain would I wish what my heart cannot will:
Between it and the fire a
veil of ice
Deadens the fire, so that
I deal in lies;
My words and actions are discordant
still.
I love Thee with my tongue, then mourn my fill;
For love warms not my heart,
nor can I rise,
Or ope the doors of Grace,
who from the skies
Might flood my soul, and pride
and passion kill.
Rend Thou the veil, dear Lord! Break Thou that
wall
Which with its stubbornness
retards the rays
Of that bright sun this earth
hath dulled for me!
Send down Thy promised light to cheer and fall
On Thy fair spouse, that I
with love may blaze,
And, free from doubt, my heart
feel only Thee!
THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
Non fur men lieti.
Not less elate than smitten with wild woe
To see not them but Thee by
death undone,
Were those blest souls, when
Thou above the sun
Didst raise, by dying, men
that lay so low:
Elate, since freedom from all ills that flow
From their first fault for
Adam’s race was won;
Sore smitten, since in torment
fierce God’s son
Served servants on the cruel
cross below.
Heaven showed she knew Thee, who Thou wert and whence,
Veiling her eyes above the
riven earth;
The mountains trembled and
the seas were troubled.
He took the Fathers from hell’s darkness dense:
The torments of the damned
fiends redoubled:
Man only joyed, who gained
baptismal birth.
THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.
Mentre m’ attrista.
Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer
In thinking of the past, when
I recall
My weakness and my sins, and
reckon all
The vain expense of days that
disappear:
This cheers by making, ere I die, more clear
The frailty of what men delight
miscall;
But saddens me to think how
rarely fall
God’s grace and mercies
in life’s latest year.
For though Thy promises our faith compel,
Yet, Lord, what man shall
venture to maintain
That pity will condone our
long neglect?
Still from Thy blood poured forth we know full well
How without measure was Thy
martyr’s pain,
How measureless the gifts
we dare expect.
THE PROEM.
Io che nacqui dal Senno.
Born of God’s Wisdom and Philosophy,
Keen lover of true beauty
and true good,
I call the vain self-traitorous
multitude
Back to my mother’s
milk; for it is she,
Faithful to God her spouse, who nourished me,
Making me quick and active
to intrude
Within the inmost veil, where
I have viewed
And handled all things in
eternity.
If the whole world’s our home where we may run,
Up, friends, forsake those
secondary schools
Which give grains, units,
inches for the whole!
If facts surpass mere words, melt pride of soul,
And pain, and ignorance that
hardens fools,
Here in the fire I’ve
stolen from the Sun!
TO THE POETS.
In superbia il valor.
Valour to pride hath turned; grave holiness
To vile hypocrisy; all gentle
ways
To empty forms; sound sense
to idle lays;
Pure love to heat; beauty
to paint and dress:—
Thanks to you, Poets! you who sing the praise
Of fabled knights, foul fires,
lies, nullities;
Not virtue, nor the wrapped
sublimities
Of God, as bards were wont
in those old days.
How far more wondrous than your phantasies
Are Nature’s works,
how far more sweet to sing!
Thus taught, the soul falsehood
and truth descries.
That tale alone is worth the pondering,
Which hath not smothered history
in lies,
And arms the soul against
each sinful thing.
THE UNIVERSE.
Il mondo e un animal.
The world’s a living creature, whole and great,
God’s image, praising
God whose type it is;
We are imperfect worms, vile
families,
That in its belly have our
low estate.
If we know not its love, its intellect,
Neither the worm within my
belly seeks
To know me, but his petty
mischief wreaks:—
Thus it behoves us to be circumspect.
Again, the earth is a great animal,
Within the greatest; we are
like the lice
Upon its body, doing harm
as they.
Proud men, lift up your eyes; on you I call:
Measure each being’s
worth; and thence be wise;
Learning what part in the
great scheme you play!
THE SOUL.
Dentro un pugno di cervel.
A handful of brain holds me: I consume
So much that all the books
the world contains,
Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:—
What feasts were mine!
Yet hunger is my doom.
With one world Aristarchus fed my greed;
This finished, others Metrodorus
gave;
Yet, stirred by restless yearning,
still I crave:
The more I know, the more
to learn I need.
Thus I’m an image of that Sire in whom
All beings are, like fishes
in the sea;
That one true object of the
loving mind.
Reasoning may reach Him, like a shaft shot home;
The Church may guide; but
only blest is he
Who loses self in God, God’s
self to find.
THE BOOK OF NATURE.
Il mondo e il libro.
The world’s the book where the eternal Sense
Wrote his own thoughts; the
living temple where,
Painting his very self, with
figures fair
He filled the whole immense
circumference.
Here then should each man read, and gazing find
Both how to live and govern,
and beware
Of godlessness; and, seeing
God all-where,
Be bold to grasp the universal
mind.
But we tied down to books and temples dead,
Copied with countless errors
from the life,—
These nobler than that school
sublime we call.
O may our senseless souls at length be led
To truth by pain, grief, anguish,
trouble, strife!
Turn we to read the one original!
AN EXHORTATION TO MANKIND.
Abitator del mondo.
Ye dwellers on this world, to the first Mind
Exalt your eyes; and ye shall
see how low
Vile Tyranny, wearing the
glorious show
Of nobleness and worth, keeps
you confined.
Then look at proud Hypocrisy, entwined
With lies and snares, who
once taught men to know
The fear of God. Next
to the Sophists go,
Traitors to thought and reason,
jugglers blind.
Keen Socrates to quell the Sophists came:
To quell the Tyrants, Cato
just and rough:
To quell the Hypocrites, Christ,
heaven’s own flame.
But to unmask fraud, sacrilege, and lies,
Or boldly rush on death, is
not enough;
Unless we all taste God, made
inly wise.
THE BROOD OF IGNORANCE.
Io nacqui a debellar.
To quell three Titan evils I was made,—
Tyranny, Sophistry, Hypocrisy;
Whence I perceive with what
wise harmony
Themis on me Love, Power,
and Wisdom laid.
These are the basements firm whereon is stayed,
Supreme and strong, our new
philosophy;
The antidotes against that
trinal lie
Wherewith the burdened world
groaning is weighed.
Famine, war, pestilence, fraud, envy, pride,
SELF-LOVE.
Credulo il proprio amor.
Self-love fools man with false opinion
That earth, air, water, fire,
the stars we see,
Though stronger and more beautiful
than we,
Feel nought, love not, but
move for us alone.
Then all the tribes of earth except his own
Seem to him senseless, rude—God
lets them be:
To kith and kin next shrinks
his sympathy,
Till in the end loves only
self each one.
Learning he shuns that he may live at ease;
And since the world is little
to his mind,
God and God’s ruling
Forethought he denies.
Craft he calls wisdom; and, perversely blind,
Seeking to reign, erects new
deities:
At last ‘I make the
Universe!’ he cries.
LOVE OF SELF AND GOD.
Questo amor singolar.
This love of self sinks man in sinful sloth:
Yet, if he seek to live, he
needs must feign
Sense, goodness, courage.
Thus he dwells in pain,
A sphinx, twy-souled, a false
self-stunted growth.
Honours, applause, and wealth these torments soothe;
Till jealousy, contrasting
his foul stain
With virtues eminent, by spur
and rein
Drives him to slay, steal,
poison, break his oath.
But he who loves our common Father, hath
All men for brothers, and
with God doth joy
In whatsoever worketh for
their bliss.
Good Francis called the birds upon his path
Brethren; to him the fishes
were not coy.—
Oh, blest is he who comprehendeth
this!
EARTHLY AND DIVINE LOVE.
Se Dio ci da la vita.
God gives us life, and God our life preserves;
Nay, all our happiness on
Him doth rest:
Why then should love of God
inflame man’s breast
Less than his lady and the
lord he serves?
Through mean and wanton ignorance he swerves,
And worships a false Good,
divinely dressed;
Love cannot soar to what it
never guessed,
But stoops its flight, and
the thralled soul unnerves.
Here too is man deceived. He yields his own
To spend on others. Yet
in vile delight
God’s splendour still
shines through love’s earthliness.
But we embrace the loss, the lure alone
Love fools us with. That
glimpse of heavenly light,
That foretaste of eternal
Good, we miss.
THE PHILOSOPHER.
Gran fortuna e ’l saper.
Wisdom is riches great and great estate,
Far above wealth; nor are
the wise unblest
If born of lineage vile or
race oppressed:
These by their doom sublime
they illustrate.
They have their griefs for guerdon, to dilate
Their name and glory; nay,
the cross, the sword
Make them to be like saints
or God adored;
And gladness greets them in
the frowns of fate:
For joys and sorrows are their dear delight;
Even as a lover takes the
weal and woe
Felt for his lady. Such
is wisdom’s might.
But wealth still vexes fools; more vile they grow
By being noble; and their
luckless light
With each new misadventure
burns more low.
A PARABLE OF WISE MEN AND THE WORLD.
Gli astrologi antevista.
Once on a time the astronomers foresaw
The coming of a star to madden
men:
Thus warned they fled the
land, thinking that when
The folk were crazed, they’d
hold the reins of law
When they returned the realm to overawe,
They prayed those maniacs
to quit cave and den,
And use their old good customs
once again;
But these made answer with
fist, tooth, and claw:
So that the wise men were obliged to rule
Themselves like lunatics to
shun grim death,
Seeing the biggest maniac
now was king.
Stifling their sense, they lived, aping the fool,
In public praising act and
word and thing
Just as the whims of madmen
swayed their breath.
THE WORLD’S A STAGE.
Nel teatro del mondo.
The world’s a theatre: age after age,
Souls masked and muffled in
their fleshly gear
Before the supreme audience
appear,
As Nature, God’s own
Art, appoints the stage.
Each plays the part that is his heritage;
From choir to choir they pass,
from sphere to sphere,
And deck themselves with joy
or sorry cheer,
As Fate the comic playwright
fills the page.
None do or suffer, be they cursed or blest,
Aught otherwise than the great
Wisdom wrote
To gladden each and all who
gave Him mirth,
When we at last to sea or air or earth
Yielding these masks that
weal or woe denote,
In God shall see who spoke
and acted best.
THE HUMAN COMEDY.
Natura dal Signor.
Nature, by God directed, formed in space
The universal comedy we see;
Wherein each star, each man,
each entity,
Each living creature, hath
its part and place:
And when the play is over, it shall be
That God will judge with justice
and with grace.—
Aping this art divine, the
human race
Plans for itself on earth
a comedy:
It makes kings, priests, slaves, heroes for the eyes
Of vulgar folk; and gives
them masks to play
Their several parts—not
wisely, as we see;
For impious men too oft we canonise,
And kill the saints; while
spurious lords array
Their hosts against the real
nobility.
THE TRUE KINGS.
Neron fu Re.
Nero was king by accident in show;
But Socrates by nature in
good sooth;
By right of both Augustus;
luck and truth
Less perfectly were blent
in Scipio.
The spurious prince still seeks to extirpate
The seed of natures born imperial—
Like Herod, Caiaphas, Meletus,
all
Who by bad acts sustain their
stolen state.
Slaves whose souls tell them that they are but slaves,
Strike those whose native
kinghood all can see:
Martyrdom is the stamp of
royalty.
Dead though they be, these govern from their graves:
The tyrants fall, nor can
their laws remain;
While Paul and Peter rise
o’er Rome to reign.
WHAT MAKES A KING.
Chi pennelli have e colori.
He who hath brush and colours, and chance-wise
Doth daub, befouling walls
and canvases,
Is not a painter; but, unhelped
by these,
He who in art is masterful
and wise.
Cowls and the tonsure do not make a friar;
Nor make a king wide realms
and pompous wars;
But he who is all Jesus, Pallas,
Mars,
Though he be slave or base-born,
wears the tiar.
Man is not born crowned like the natural king
Of beasts, for beasts by this
investiture
Have need to know the head
they must obey;
Wherefore a commonwealth fits men, I say,
Or else a prince whose worth
is tried and sure,
Not proved by sloth or false
imagining.
TO JESUS CHRIST.
I tuo’ seguaci.
Thy followers to-day are less like Thee,
The crucified, than those
who made Thee die,
Good Jesus, wandering all
ways awry
From rules prescribed in Thy
wise charity.
The saints now most esteemed love lying lips,
Lust, strife, injustice; sweet
to them the cry
Drawn forth by monstrous pangs
from men that die:
So many plagues hath not the
Apocalypse
As these wherewith they smite Thy friends ignored—
Even as I am; search my heart,
and know;
My life, my sufferings bear
Thy stamp and sign.
If Thou return to earth, come armed; for lo,
Thy foes prepare fresh crosses
for Thee, Lord!
Not Turks, not Jews, but they
who call them Thine.
TO DEATH.
Morte, stipendio della colpa.
O Death, the wage of our first father’s blame,
Daughter of envy and nonentity,
Serf of the serpent, and his
harlotry,
Thou beast most arrogant and
void of shame!
Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim,
Crying that all things are
subdued to thee,
Against the Almighty raised
almightily?—
The proofs that prop thy pride
of state are lame.
Not to serve thee, but to make thee serve Him,
He stoops to Hell. The
choice of arms was thine;
Yet art thou scoffed at by
the crucified!
He lives—thy loss. He dies—from
every limb,
Mangled by thee, lightnings
of godhead shine,
From which thy darkness hath
not where to hide.
ON THE SEPULCHRE OF CHRIST.
No. I.
O tu ch’ ami la parte.
O you who love the part more than the whole,
And love yourself more than
all human kind,
Who persecute good men with
prudence blind
Because they combat your malign
control,
See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school,
Each sect profane, o’erthrown
by his great mind,
Whose best our good to Deity
refined,
The while they thought Death
triumphed o’er his soul.
Deem you that only you have thought and sense,
While heaven and all its wonders,
sun and earth,
Scorned in your dullness,
lack intelligence?
Fool! what produced you? These things gave you
birth:
So have they mind and God.
Repent; be wise!
Man fights but ill with Him
who rules the skies.
ON THE SEPULCHRE OF CHRIST.
No. 2.
Quinci impara a stupirti.
Here bend in boundless wonder; bow your head:
Think how God’s deathless
Mind, that men might be
Robed in celestial immortality
(O Love divine!), in flesh
was raimented:
How He was killed and buried; from the dead
How He arose to life with
victory,
And reigned in heaven; how
all of us shall be
Glorious like Him whose hearts
to His are wed:
How they who die for love of reason, give
Hypocrites, tyrants, sophists—all
who sell
Their neighbours ill for holiness—to
hell:
How the dead saint condemns the bad who live;
How all he does becomes a
law for men;
How he at last to judge shall
come again!
THE RESURRECTION.
Se sol sei ore.
If Christ was only six hours crucified
After few years of toil and
misery,
Which for mankind He suffered
willingly,
While heaven was won for ever
when He died;
Why should He still be shown on every side,
Painted and preached, in nought
IDEAL LOVE.
Il vero amante.
He who loves truly, grows in force and might;
For beauty and the image of
his love
Expand his spirit: whence
he burns to prove
Adventures high, and holds
all perils light.
If thus a lady’s love dilate the knight,
What glories and what joy
all joys above
Shall not the heavenly splendour,
joined by love
Unto our flesh-imprisoned
soul, excite?
Once freed, she would become one sphere immense
Of love, power, wisdom, filled
with Deity,
Elate with wonders of the
eternal Sense.
But we like sheep and wolves war ceaselessly:
That love we never seek, that
light intense,
Which would exalt us to infinity.
THE MODERN CUPID.
Son tremil’ anni.
Through full three thousand years the world reveres
Blind Love that bears the
quiver and hath wings:
Now too he’s deaf, and
to the sufferings
Of folk in anguish turns impiteous
ears.
Of gold he’s greedy, and dark raiment wears;
A child no more, that naked
sports and sings,
But a sly greybeard; no gold
shaft he flings,
Now that fire-arms have cursed
these latter years.
Charcoal and sulphur, thunder, lead, and smoke,
That leave the flesh with
plagues of hell diseased,
And drive the craving spirit
deaf and blind,
These are his weapons. But my bell hath broke
Her silence. Yield, thou
deaf, blind, tainted beast,
To the wise fervour of a blameless
mind!
TRUE AND FALSE NOBILITY.
In noi dal senno.
Valour and mind form real nobility,
The which bears fruit and
shows a fair increase
By doughty actions: these
and nought but these
Confer true patents of gentility.
Money is false and light unless it be
Bought by a man’s own
worthy qualities;
And blood is such that its
corrupt disease
And ignorant pretence are
foul to see.
Honours that ought to yield more true a type,
Europe, thou measurest by
fortune still,
To thy great hurt; and this
thy foe perceives:
He rates the tree by fruits mature and ripe,
Not by mere shadows, roots,
and verdant leaves:—
Why then neglect so grave
a cause of ill?
THE PEOPLE.
Il popolo e una bestia.
The people is a beast of muddy brain,
That knows not its own force,
and therefore stands
Loaded with wood and stone;
the powerless hands
Of a mere child guide it with
bit and rein:
One kick would be enough to break the chain;
But the beast fears, and what
the child demands,
It does; nor its own terror
understands,
Confused and stupefied by
bugbears vain.
Most wonderful! with its own hand it ties
And gags itself—gives
itself death and war
For pence doled out by kings
from its own store.
Its own are all things between earth and heaven;
But this it knows not; and
if one arise
To tell this truth, it kills
him unforgiven.
CONSCIENCE.
Seco ogni coif a e doglia.
All crime is its own torment, bearing woe
To mind or body or decrease
of fame;
If not at once, still step
by step our name
Or blood or friends or fortune
it brings low.
But if our will do not resent the blow,
We have not sinned. That
penance hath no blame
Which Magdalen found sweet:
purging our shame,
Self-punishment is virtue,
all men know.
The consciousness of goodness pure and whole
Makes a man fully blest; but
misery
Springs from false conscience,
blinded in its pride.
This Simon Peter meant when he replied
To Simon Magus, that the prescient
soul
Hath her own proof of immortality.
THE BAD PRINCE.
Mentola al comun corpo.
Organ of rut, not reason, is the lord
Who from the body politic
doth drain
Lust for himself, instead
of toil and pain,
Leaving us lean as crickets
on dry sward.
Well too if he like Love would filch our hoard
With pleasure to ourselves,
sluicing our vein
And vigour to perpetuate the
strain
Of life by spilth of life
within us stored!
Love’s cheat yields joy and profit. Kings,
less kind,
Harm those they hoodwink;
sow bare rock with seed;
Nor use our waste to propagate
the breed.
Heaven help that body which a little mind,
Housed in a head, lacking
ears, tongue, and eyes,
And senseless but for smell,
can tyrannise!
ON ITALY.
La gran Donna.
That Lady who to Caesar came in state
Upon the Rubicon, what time
she feared
Ruin from those strange races
who appeared
Erewhile to build her empire
strong and great,
Now stays with limbs dispersed and lacerate,
A bondslave, shorn of all
her pomp revered:
TO VENICE.
Nuova arca di Noe.
New Ark of Noah! when the cruel scourge
Of that barbarian tyrant like
a wave
Went over Italy, thou then
didst save
The seed of just men on the
weltering surge.
Here, still by discord and foul servitude
Untainted, thou a hero brood
dost raise,
Powerful and prudent.
Due to thee their praise
Of maiden pure, of teeming
motherhood!
Thou wonder of the world, Rome’s loyal heir,
Thou pride and strong support
of Italy,
Dial of princes, school of
all things wise!
Thou like Arcturus steadfast in the skies,
With tardy sense guidest thy
kingdom fair,
Bearing alone the load of
liberty.
TO GENOA.
Le Ninfe d’Arno.
The nymphs of Arno; Adria’s goddess-queen;
Greece, where the Latin banner
floated free;
The lands that border on the
Syrian sea;
The Euxine, and fair Naples;
these have been
Thine, by the right of conquest; these should be
Still thine by empire:
Asia’s broad demesne,
Afric, America—realms
never seen
But by thy venture—all
belong to thee.
But thou, thyself not knowing, leavest all
For a poor price to strangers;
since thy head
Is weak, albeit thy limbs
are stout and good.
Genoa, mistress of the world, recall
Thy soul magnanimous!
Nay, be not led
Slave to base gold, thou and
thy tameless brood!
TO POLAND.
Sopra i regni.
High o’er those realms that make blind chance
the heir
Of empire, Poland, dost thou
lift thy head:
For while thou mournest for
thy monarch dead,
Thou wilt not let his son
the sceptre bear,
Lest he prove weak perchance to do or dare.
Yet art thou even more by
luck misled,
Choosing a prince of fortune,
courtly-bred,
Uncertain whether he will
spend or spare.
Oh, quit this pride! In hut or shepherd’s
pen
Seek Cato, Minos, Numa!
For of such
God still makes kings in plenty:
and these men
Will squander little substance and gain much,
Knowing that virtue and not
blood shall be
Their titles to true immortality.
TO THE SWISS.
Se voi piu innalza.
Ye Alpine rocks! If less your peaks elate
To heaven exalt you than that
gift divine,
Freedom; why do your children
still combine
To keep the despots in their
stolen state?
Lo, for a piece of bread from windows wide
You fling your blood, taking
no thought what cause,
Righteous or wrong, your strength
to battle draws;
So is your valour spurned
and vilified.
All things belong to free men; but the slave
Clothes and feeds poorly.
Even so from you
Broad lands and Malta’s
knighthood men withhold.
Up, free yourselves, and act as heroes do!
Go, take your own from tyrants,
which you gave
So recklessly, and they so
dear have sold!
THE SAMARITAN.
Da Roma ad Ostia.
From Rome to Ostia a poor man went;
Thieves robbed and wounded
him upon the way;
Some monks, great saints,
observed him where he lay,
And left him, on their breviaries
intent.
A Bishop passed thereby, and careless bent
To sign the cross, a blessing
brief to say;
But a great Cardinal, to clutch
their prey,
Followed the thieves, falsely
benevolent.
At last there came a German Lutheran,
Who builds on faith, merit
of works withstands;
He raised and clothed and
healed the dying man.
Now which of these was worthiest,
most humane?
The heart is better than the head, kind hands
Than cold lip-service; faith
without works is vain.
Who
understands
What creed is good and true
for self and others?—
But none can doubt the good
he doth his brothers.
HYPOCRITES.
Nessun ti venne a dir.
Who comes and saith: ‘A Tyrant, lo, am
I!’
And, ‘I am Antichrist!’
what man will swear?
The crafty rogue, hiding his
poisonous ware,
Sells you what slays your
soul, for sanctity.
Cheats, brigands, prostitutes, and all that fry,
Not having fashioned so devout
a snare,
Appear worse sinners than
perhaps they are;
For where the craft’s
small, small’s the villainy;
You’re on your guard. The meek Samaritan
Makes way before those guileful
Pharisees,
Though God assigned to him
the higher place.
Not words nor wonders prove
a virtuous man,
But deeds and acts. How many deities
Hath this false standard given
the human race!
SOPHISTS.
Nessun ti verra a dire.
‘Behold, I am a Sophist!’ no man saith.
But the true sons of perfidy
refined
Forge theologic lies the soul
to blind,
Calling themselves evangels
of the faith.
Aretine with his scoundrels blew his breath,
AGAINST HYPOCRITES.
Gli affetti di Pluton.
Deep in their hearts they hide the lusts of Hell:
Christ’s name is written
on their brow, that those
Who only view the husk, may
not suppose
What guile and malice harbour
in the shell.
O God! O Wisdom! Holy Fervour! Well
Of strength invincible to
strike Thy foes!
Give me the force—my
spirit burns and glows—
To strip those idols and to
break their spell!
The zeal I bear unto Thy name benign,
The love I feel for truth
sincere and pure,
When such men triumph, make
me rend my hair.
How long shall folk this infamy endure—
That he should be held
sacred, he divine,
Who strips e’en corpses
in the graveyard bare?
ON THE LORD’S PRAYER.
No. I.
Vilissima progenie.
Ye vile offscourings! with unblushing face
Dare ye claim sonship to our
heavenly Sire,
Who serve brute vices, crouching
in the mire
To hounds and conies, beasts
that ape our race?
Such truckling is called virtue by the base
Hucksters of sophistry, the
priest and friar,—
Gilt claws of tyrant brutes,—who
lie for hire,
Preaching that God delights
in this disgrace.
Look well, ye brainless folk! Do fathers hold
Their children slaves to serfs?
Do sheep obey
The witless ram? Why
make a beast your king?
If there are no archangels, let your fold
Be governed by the sense of
all: why stray
From men to worship every
filthy thing?
ON THE LORD’S PRAYER.
No. 2.
Dov’ e la liberta.
Where are the freedom and high feats that spring
From fatherhood so fair as
Deity?
Fleas are no sons of men,
although they be
Flesh-born: brave thoughts
and deeds this honour bring.
If princes great or small seek anything
Adverse to good and God’s
authority,
Which of you dares refuse?
Nay, who is he
That doth not cringe to do
their pleasuring?
So then with soul and blood in verity
You serve base gold, vices,
and worthless men—
God with lip-service only
and with lies,
Sunk in the slough of dire idolatry:
If Ignorance begat these errors,
then
To Reason turn for sonship
and be wise!
ON THE LORD’S PRAYER.
No. 3.
Allor potrete orar.
Then shall ye pray with every hour that flies;
Thy kingdom come, and let
Thy will be done
On earth as in the spheres
above the sun,
When all we hoped and wished
shall bless our eyes.
Poets shall see their Age of Gold arise,
Fairer than feigned in hymn
or orison;
Yea, all the realm by Adam’s
sin undone
Shall be restored in sinless
Paradise.
Philosophers shall govern for their own
That perfect commonwealth
whereof they write,
The which on earth as yet
was never known.
Judah to Sion shall return with might
Of greater wonders than shook
Pharaoh’s throne,
From Babylon, to bless the
prophets’ sight.
A PROPHECY OF JUDGMENT.
No. 1.
THE REIGN OF ANTICHRIST.
Mentre l’acquila invola.
While yet the eagle preys, and growls the bear;
While roars the lion; while
the crow defies
The lamb who raised our race
above the skies;
While yet the dove laments
to the deaf air;
While, mixed with goodly wheat, darnel and tare
Within the field of human
nature rise;—
Let that ungodly sect, profanely
wise,
That scorns our hope, feed,
fatten, and beware!
Soon comes the day when those grim giants fell,
Famed through the world, dyed
deep with sanguine hue,
Whom with feigned flatteries
you applaud, shall be
Swept from the earth, and sunk in horrid Hell,
Girt round with flames, to
weep and wail with you,
In doleful dungeons everlastingly.
A PROPHECY OF JUDGMENT.
No. 2.
THE DOOM OF THE IMPIOUS.
La scuola inimicissima.
You sect most adverse to the good and true,
Degenerate from your origin
divine,
Pastured on lies and shadows
by the line
Of Thais, Sinon, Judas, Homer!
You,
Thus saith the Spirit, when the retinue
Of saints with Christ returns
on earth to shine,
When the fifth angel’s
vial pours condign
Vengeance with awful ire and
torments due,—
You shall be girt with gloom; your lips profane,
Disloyal tongues, and savage
teeth shall grind
And gnash with fury fell and
anger vain:
In Malebolge your damned souls confined
On fiery marle, for increment
of pain,
Shall see the saved rejoice
with mirth of mind.
A PROPHECY OF JUDGMENT.
No. 3.
THE GOLDEN AGE.
Se fu nel mondo.
If men were happy in that age of gold,
We yet may hope to see mild
Saturn’s reign;
For all things that were buried
live again,
By time’s revolving
cycle forward rolled.
Yet this the fox, the wolf, the crow, made bold
By fraud and perfidy, deny—in
vain:
For God that rules, the signs
in heaven, the train
Of prophets, and all hearts
this faith uphold.
If thine and mine were banished in good sooth
From honour, pleasure, and
utility,
The world would turn, I ween,
to Paradise;
Blind love to modest love with open eyes;
Cunning and ignorance to living
truth;
And foul oppression to fraternity.
THE MILLENNIUM.
Non piaccia a Dio.
Nay, God forbid that mid these tragic throes
To idle comedy my thought
should bend,
When torments dire and warning
woes portend
Of this our world the instantaneous
close!
The day approaches which shall discompose
All earthly sects, the elements
shall blend
In utter ruin, and with joy
shall send
Just spirits to their spheres
in heaven’s repose.
The Highest comes in Holy Land to hold
His sovran court and synod
sanctified,
As all the psalms and prophets
have foretold:
The riches of his grace He will spread wide
Through his own realm, that
seat and chosen fold
Of worship and free mercies
multiplied.
THE PRESENT.
Convien al secol nostro.
Black robes befit our age. Once they were white;
Next many-hued; now dark as
Afric’s Moor,
Night-black, infernal, traitorous,
obscure,
Horrid with ignorance and
sick with fright.
For very shame we shun all colours bright,
Who mourn our end—the
tyrants we endure,
The chains, the noose, the
lead, the snares, the lure—
Our dismal heroes, our souls
sunk in night.
Black weeds again denote that extreme folly
Which makes us blind, mournful,
and woe-begone:
For dusk is dear to doleful
melancholy;
Nathless fate’s wheel still turns: this
raiment dun
We shall exchange hereafter
for the holy
Garments of white in which
of yore we shone.
THE FUTURE.
Veggo in candida robba.
Clothed in white robes I see the Holy Sire
Descend to hold his court
amid the band
Of shining saints and elders:
at his hand
The white immortal Lamb commands
their choir.
John ends his long lament for torments dire,
Now Judah’s lion rises
to expand
The fatal book, and the first
broken band
Sends the white courier forth
to work God’s ire.
The first fair spirits raimented in white
THE YEAR 1603.
Gia sto mirando.
The first heaven-wandering lights I see ascend
Upon the seventh and ninth
centenary,
When in the Archer’s
realm three years shall be
Added, this aeon and our age
to end.
Thou too, Mercurius, like a scribe dost lend
Thine aid to promulgate that
dread decree,
Stored in the archives of
eternity,
And signed and sealed by powers
no prayers can bend.
O’er Europe’s full meridian on thy morn
In the tenth house thy court
I see thee hold:
The Sun with thee consents
in Capricorn.
God grant that I may keep this mortal breath
Until I too that glorious
day behold
Which shall at last confound
the sons of death!
NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S IMAGE.
Babel disfatta.
The golden head was Babylon; she passed:
Persia came next, the silvern
breast: whereto
Joined brazen flank and belly—these
are you,
Ye men of Macedon! Now
Rome’s the last.
Rome on two iron legs towered tall and vast;
But at her feet were toes
of clay, that drew
Downfall: those scattered
tribes erewhile she knew
For lords; now ’neath
her fatal sway they’re cast.
Ah thirsty soil! From your parched fallow fumes
A smoke of pride, vain-glory,
cruelty,
That blinds, infects, and
blackens, and consumes!
To Daniel, to the Bible you refuse
Your rebel sense; for it is
still your use
To screen yourself with lies
and sophistry.
THE DUNGEON.
Come va al centro.
As to the centre all things that have weight
Sink from the surface:
as the silly mouse
Runs at a venture, rash though
timorous,
Into the monster’s jaws
to meet her fate:
Thus all who love high Science, from the strait
Dead sea of Sophistry sailing
like us
Into Truth’s ocean,
bold and amorous,
Must in our haven anchor soon
or late.
One calls this haunt a Cave of Polypheme,
And one Atlante’s Palace,
one of Crete
The Labyrinth, and one Hell’s
lowest pit.
Knowledge, grace, mercy, are an idle dream
In this dread place.
Nought but fear dwells in it,
Of stealthy Tyranny the sacred
seat.
THE SAGE ON EARTH.
Sciolto e legato.
Bound and yet free, companioned and alone,
Loud mid my silence, I confound
my foes:
Men think me fool in this
vile world of woes;
God’s wisdom greets
me sage from heaven’s high throne.
With wings on earth oppressed aloft I bound;
My gleeful soul sad bonds
of flesh enclose:
And though sometimes too great
the burden grows,
These pinions bear me upward
from the ground.
A doubtful combat proves the warrior’s might:
Short is all time matched
with eternity:
Nought than a pleasing burden
is more light.
My brows I bind with my love’s effigy,
Sure that my joyous flight
will soon be sped
Where without speech my thoughts
shall all be read.
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM.
D’ Italia in Grecia.
From Rome to Greece, from Greece to Libya’s
sand,
Yearning for liberty, just
Cato went;
Nor finding freedom to his
heart’s content,
Sought it in death, and died
by his own hand.
Wise Hannibal, when neither sea nor land
Could save him from the Roman
eagles, rent
His soul with poison from
imprisonment;
And a snake’s tooth
cut Cleopatra’s band.
In this way died one valiant Maccabee;
Brutus feigned madness; prudent
Solon hid
His sense; and David, when
he feared Gath’s king.
Thus when the Mystic found that Jonah’s sea
Was yawning to engulf him,
what he did
He gave to God—a
wise man’s offering.
APOLOGY BY PARADOX.
Non e brutto il Demon.
The Devil’s not so ugly as they paint;
He’s well with all,
compact of courtesy:
Real heroism is real piety:
Before small truth great falsehoods
shrink and faint
If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint
To charge the pipkins with
impurity:
Freedom I crave: who
craves not to be free?
Yet life that must be feigned
for, leaves a taint.
Ill conduct brings repentance?—If you prate
This wise to me, why prate
not thus to all
Philosophers and prophets,
and to Christ?
Not too much learning, as some arrogate,
But the small brains of dullards
have sufficed
To make us wretched and the
world enthrall.
THE SOUL’S APOLOGY.
Ben sei mila anni.
Six thousand years or more on earth I’ve been:
Witness those histories of
nations dead,
Which for our age I have illustrated
In philosophic volumes, scene
by scene.
And thou, mere mite, seeing my sun serene
Eclipsed, wilt argue that
I had no head
To live by.—Why
not try the sun instead,
If nought in fate unfathomed
thou hast seen?
If wise men, whom the world rebukes, combined
TO GOD ON PRAYER.
Tu che Forza ed Amor.
O Thou, who, mingling Force and Love, dost draw
And guide the complex of all
entities,
Framed for that purpose; whence
our reason sees
In supreme Fate the synthesis
of Law;
Though prayers transgress which find defect or flaw
In things foredoomed by Thy
divine decrees,
Yet wilt Thou modify, by slow
degrees
Or swift, good times or bad
Thy mind foresaw:
I therefore pray—I who through years have
been
The scorn of fools, the butt
of impious men,
Suffering new pains and torments
day by day—
Shorten this anguish, Lord, these griefs allay;
For still Thou shalt not have
changed counsel when
I soar from hence to liberty
foreseen.
TO GOD FOR HELP.
Come vuoi, ch’ a buon porto.
How wilt Thou I should gain a harbour fair,
If after proof among my friends
I find
That some are faithless, some
devoid of mind,
Some short of sense, though
stout to do and dare?
If some, though wise and loyal, like the hare
Hide in a hole, or fly in
terror blind,
While nerve with wisdom and
with faith combined
Through malice and through
penury despair?
Reason, Thy honour, and my weal eschewed
That false ally who said he
came from Thee,
With promise vain of power
and liberty.
I trust:—I’ll do. Change Thou
the bad to good!—
But ere I raise me to that
altitude,
Needs must I merge in Thee
as Thou in me.
To Annibale Caraccioli,
A WRITER OF ECLOGUES.
Non Licida, ne Driope.
Lycoris, Lycidas, and Dryope
Cannot, dear Niblo, save thy
name from death;
Shadows that fleet, and flowers
that yield their breath,
Match not the Love that craves
infinity.
The beauty thou dost worship dwells in thee:
Within thy soul divine it
harboureth:
This also bids my spirit soar,
and saith
Words that unsphere for me
heaven’s harmony.
Make then thine inborn lustre beam and shine
With love of goodness; goodness
cannot fail:
From God alone let praise
immense be thine.
My soul is tired of telling o’er the tale
With men: she calls on
thine: she bids thee go
Into God’s school with
tablets white as snow.
TO TELESIUS OF COSENZA.
Telesio, il telo.
Telesius, the arrow from thy bow
Midmost his band of sophists
slays that high
Tyrant of souls that think;
he cannot fly:
While Truth soars free, loosed
by the self-same blow.
Proud lyres with thine immortal praises glow,
Smitten by bards elate with
victory:
Lo, thine own Cavalcante,
stormfully
Lightning, still strikes the
fortress of the foe!
Good Gaieta bedecks our saint serene
With robes translucent, light-irradiate,
Restoring her to all her natural
sheen;
The while my tocsin at the temple-gate
Of the wide universe proclaims
her queen,
Pythia of first and last ordained
by fate.
TO RIDOLFO DI BINA.
Senno ed Amor.
Wisdom and love, O Bina, gave thee wings,
Before the blossom of thy
years had faded,
To fly with Adam for thy guide,
God-aided,
Through many lands in divers
journeyings.
Pure virtue is thy guerdon: virtue brings
Glory to thee, death to the
foes degraded,
Who through long years of
darkness have invaded
Thy Germany, mother of slaves
not kings.
Yet, gazing on heaven’s book, heroic child,
My soul discerns graces divine
in thee:—
Leave toys and playthings
to the crowd of fools!
Do thou with heart fervent and proudly mild
Make war upon those fraud-engendering
schools!
I see thee victor, and in
God I see.
TO TOBIA ADAMI.
Portando in man.
Holding the cynic lantern in your hand,
Through Europe, Egypt, Asia,
you have passed,
Till at Ausonia’s feet
you find at last
That Cyclops’ cave,
where I, to darkness banned,
In light eternal forge for you the brand
Against Abaddon, who hath
overcast
The truth and right, Adami,
made full fast
Unto God’s glory by
our steadfast band.
Go, smite each sophist, tyrant, hypocrite!
Girt with the arms of the
first Wisdom, free
Your country from the frauds
that cumber it!
Swerve not: ’twere sin. How good,
how great the praise
Of him who turns youth, strength,
soul, energy,
Unto the dayspring of the
eternal rays!
A SONNET ON CAUCASUS.
Temo che per morir.
I fear that by my death the human race
Would gain no vantage.
Thus I do not die.
So wide is this vast cage
of misery
That flight and change lead
to no happier place.
Shifting our pains, we risk a sorrier case:
All worlds, like ours, are
sunk in agony:
Go where we will, we feel;
and this my cry
I may forget like many an
GOD MADE AND GOD RULES.
La fabbrica del mondo.
The fabric of the world—earth, air, and
skies—
Each particle thereof and
tiniest part
Designed for special ends—proclaims
the art
Of an almighty Maker good
and wise.
Nathless the lawless brutes, our crimes and lies,
The joys of vicious men, the
good man’s smart,
All creatures swerving from
their ends, impart
Doubts that the Ruler is nor
good nor wise.
Can it then be that boundless Power, Love, Mind,
Lets others reign, the while
He takes repose?
Hath He grown old, or hath
He ceased to heed?
Nay, one God made and rules: He shall unwind
The tangled skein; the hidden
law disclose,
Whereby so many sinned in
thought and deed.
I. Quoted by Donato Giannotti in his Dialogue De’ giorni che Dante consumo nel cercare l’Inferno e ’l Purgatorio. The date of its composition is perhaps 1545.
II. Written probably for Donato Giannotti about the same date.
III. Belonging to the year 1506, when Michael Angelo quarrelled with Julius and left Rome in anger. The tree referred to in the last line is the oak of the Rovere family.
IV. Same date, and same circumstances. The autograph has these words at the foot of the sonnet: Vostro Miccelangniolo, in Turchia. Rome itself, the Sacred City, has become a land of infidels.
V. Ser Giovanni da Pistoja was Chancellor of the Florentine Academy. The date is probably 1509. The Sonetto a Coda is generally humorous or satiric.
VI. Written in one of those moments of affanno or stizzo to which the sculptor was subject. For the old bitterness of feeling between Florence and Pistoja, see Dante, Inferno.
VII. Michael Angelo was ill during the summer of 1544, and was nursed by Luigi del Riccio in his own house, Shortly after his recovery he quarrelled with his friend, and wrote him this sonnet as well as a very angry letter.
VIII. p. 38. Cecchino Bracci was a boy of rare and surpassing beauty who died at Rome, January 8, 1544, in his seventeenth year. Besides this sonnet, which refers to a portrait Luigi del Riccio had asked him to make of the dead youth, Michael Angelo composed a series of forty-eight quatrains upon the same subject, and sent them to his friend Luigi. Michelangelo the younger, thinking that ’l’ignoranzia degli uomini ha campo di mormorare,’ suppressed the name Cecchino and changed lui into lei. Date about 1544.
IX. Line 4: ’The Archangel’s scales alone can weigh my gratitude against your gift.’ Lines 5-8: ’Your courtesy has taken away all my power of responding to it. I am as helpless as a ship becalmed, or a wisp of straw on a stormy sea.’
X. Michael Angelo, when asked to make a portrait of his friend’s mistress, declares that he is unable to do justice to her beauty. The name Mancina is a pun upon the Italian word for the left arm, Mancino. This lady was a famous and venal beauty, mentioned among the loves of the poet Molsa.
XI. Date, 1550.
XII. This and the three next sonnets may with tolerable certainty be referred to the series written on various occasions for Vittoria Colonna.
XIII. Sent together with a letter, in which we read: l’aportatore di questa sara Urbino, che sta meco. Urbino was M. A.’s old servant, workman, and friend. See No. LXVIII. and note.
XIV. The thought is that, as the sculptor carves a statue from a rough model by addition and subtraction of the marble, so the lady of his heart refines and perfects his rude native character.
XV. This sonnet is the theme of Varchi’s Lezione. There is nothing to prove that it was addressed to Vittoria Colonna. Varchi calls it ’un suo altissimo sonetto pieno di quella antica purezza e dantesca gravita.’
XVI. The thought of the fifteenth is repeated with some variations. His lady’s heart holds for the lover good and evil things, according as he has the art to draw them forth.
XVIII. In the terzets he describes the temptations of the artist-nature, over-sensitive to beauty. Michelangelo the younger so altered these six lines as to destroy the autobiographical allusion.—Cp. No. XXVIII., note.
XIX. The lover’s heart is like an intaglio, precious by being inscribed with his lady’s image.
XX. An early composition, written on the back of a letter sent to the sculptor in Bologna by his brother Simone in 1507. M.A. was then working at the bronze statue of Julius II. Who the lady of his love was, we do not know. Notice the absence of Platonic concetti.
XXIII. It is hardly necessary to call attention to Michael Angelo’s oft-recurring Platonism. The thought that the eye alone perceives the celestial beauty, veiled beneath the fleshly form of the beloved, is repeated in many sonnets—especially in XXV., XXVIII.
XXIV. Composed probably in the year 1529.
XXV. Written on the same sheet as the foregoing sonnet, and composed probably in the same year. The thought is this: beauty passing from the lady into the lover’s soul, is there spiritualised and becomes the object of a spiritual love.
XXVII. To escape from his lady, either by interposing another image of beauty between the thought of her and his heart, or by flight, is impossible.
XXVIII. Compare Madrigal VII. in illustration of lines 5 to 8. By the analogy of that passage, I should venture to render lines 6 and 7 thus:
He made thee light, and me the eyes of art;
Nor fails my soul to find God’s counterpart.
XXX. Varchi, quoting this sonnet in his Lezione, conjectures that it was composed for Tommaso Cavalieri.
XXXI. Varchi asserts without qualification that this sonnet was addressed to Tommaso Cavalieri. The pun in the last line, Resto prigion d’un Cavalier armato, seems to me to decide the matter, though Signor Guasti and Signor Gotti both will have it that a woman must have been intended. Michelangelo the younger has only left one line, the second, untouched in his rifacimento. Instead of the last words he gives un cuor di virtu armato, being over-scrupulous for his great-uncle’s reputation.
XXXII. Written at the foot of a letter addressed by Giuliano Bugiardini the painter, from Florence, to M.A. in Rome, August 5, 1532. This then is probably the date of the composition.
XXXIV. The metaphor of fire, flint, and mortar breaks down in the last line, where M.A. forgets that gold cannot strike a spark from stone.
XXXV. Line 9 has the word Signor. It is almost certain that where M.A. uses this word without further qualification in a love sonnet, he means his mistress. I have sometimes translated it ‘heart’s lord’ or ‘loved lord,’ because I did not wish to merge the quaintness of this ancient Tuscan usage in the more commonplace ‘lady.’
XXXVI. Line 3: the lord, etc. This again is the poet’s mistress. The drift of the sonnet is this: his soul can find no expression but through speech, and speech is too gross to utter the purity of his feeling. His mistress again receives his tongue’s message with her ears; and thus there is an element of sensuality, false and alien to his intention, both in his complaint and in her acceptation of it. The last line is a version of the proverb: chi e avvezzo a dir bugie, non crede a nessuno.
XXXVII. At the foot of the sonnet is written Mandato. The two last lines play on the words signor and signoria. To whom it was sent we do not know for certain; but we may conjecture Vittoria Colonna.
XXXIX. The paper on which this sonnet is written has a memorandum with the date January 6, 1529. ’On my return from Venice, I, Michelagniolo Buonarroti, found in the house about five loads of straw,’ etc. It belongs therefore to the period of the siege of Florence, when M.A., as is well known, fled for a short space to Venice. In line 12, I have translated il mie signiore, my lady.
XL. No sonnet in the whole collection seems to have cost M.A. so much trouble as this. Besides the two completed versions, which I have rendered, there are several scores of rejected or various readings for single lines in the MSS. The Platonic doctrine of Anamnesis probably supplies the key to the thought which the poet attempted to work out.
XLI., XLII., XLIII., XLIV. There is nothing to prove that these four sonnets on Night were composed in sequence. On the contrary, the personal tone of XLI. seems to separate this from the other three. XLIV. may be accepted as a palinode for XLIII.
XLV., XLVI. Both sonnets deal half humorously with a thought very prominent in M.A.’s compositions—the effect of love on one who is old in years. Cp. XLVIII., L.
XLVII. The Platonic conception that the pure form of Beauty or of Truth, if seen, would be overwhelming in its brilliancy.
XLIX. The dolcie pianto and eterna pace are the tears and peace of piety. The doloroso riso and corta pace are the smiles and happiness of earthly love.
LII. Here is another version of this very beautiful sonnet.
No mortal thing enthralled these longing
eyes
When perfect peace
in thy fair face I found;
But far within,
where all is holy ground,
My soul felt Love,
her comrade of the skies:
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Nor all the shows
of beauty shed around
This fair false
world her wings to earth have bound;
Unto the Love
of Loves aloft she flies.
Nay, things that suffer death, quench
not the fire
Of deathless spirits;
nor eternity
Serves sordid
Time, that withers all things rare.
Not love but lawless impulse is desire:
That slays the
soul; our love makes still more fair
Our friends on
earth, fairer in death on high.
LIII. This is the doctrine of the Symposium; the scorn of merely sexual love is also Platonic.
LIV. Another sonnet on the theme of the Uranian as distinguished from the Vulgar love. See below, LVL., for a parallel to the second terzet.
LV. The date maybe 1532. The play on words in the first quatrain and the first terzet is Shakespearian.
LIX. Two notes, appended to the two autographs of this sonnet, show that M.A. regarded it as a jeu d’esprit, ’Per carnovale par lecito far qualche pazzia a chi non va in maschera.’ ’Questo non e fuoco da carnovale, pero vel mando di quaresima; e a voi mi rachomando. Vostro Michelagniolo.’
LXL. Date 1547. No sonnet presents more difficulties than this, in which M.A. has availed himself of a passage in the Cratylus of Plato. The divine hammer spoken of in the second couplet is the ideal pattern after which the souls of men are fashioned; and this in the first terzet seems to be identified with Vittoria Colonna. In the second terzet he regards his own soul as imperfect, lacking the final touches which it might have received from hers. See XIV. for a somewhat similar conceit.
LXIV. The image is that of a glowing wood coal smouldering away to embers amid its own ashes.
LXV. Date 1554. Addressed A messer Giorgio Vasari, amico e pittor singulare, with this letter: Messer Giorgio, amico caro, voi direte ben ch’ io sie vecchio e pazzo a voler far sonetti; ma perche molti dicono ch’ io son rimbambito, ho voluto far l’uficio mio, ec. A di 19 di settembre 1554. Vostro Michelagniolo Buonarroti in Roma.
LXVL, LXVII. These two sonnets were sent to Giorgio Vasari in 1555(?) with this letter: Messer Giorgio, io vi mando dua sonetti; e benche sieno cosa sciocca, il fo perche veggiate dove io tengo i mie’ pensieri: e quando arete ottantuno anni, come o io, mi crederete. Pregovi gli diate a messer Giovan Francesco Fattucci, che me ne a chiesti. Vostro Michelagniolo Buonarroti in Roma. The first was also sent to Monsignor Beccadelli, Archbishop of Ragusa, who replied to it. For his sonnet, see Signor Guasti’s edition, p. 233.
LXVIII. Date 1556. Written in reply to his friend’s invitation that he should pay him a visit at Ragusa. Line 10: this Urbino was M.A.’s old and faithful servant, Francesco d’Amadore di Casteldurante, who lived with him twenty-six years, and died at Rome in 1556.
LXIX.-LXXVII. The dates of this series of penitential sonnets are not known. It is clear that they were written in old age. It will be remembered that the latest piece of marble on which Michael Angelo worked, was the unfinished Pieta now standing behind the choir of the Duomo at Florence. Many of his latest drawings are designs for a Crucifixion.
I. Line 1: the Italian words which I have translated God’s Wisdom and Philosophy are Senno and Sofia. Campanella held that the divine Senno penetrated the whole universe, and, meeting with created Sofia, gave birth to Science. This sonnet is therefore a sort of Mythopoem, figuring the process whereby true knowledge, as distinguished from sophistry, is derived by the human reason interrogating God in Nature and within the soul. Line 5: Sofia has for her husband Senno; the human intellect is married to the divine. Line 9: it was the doctrine of Campanella and the school to which he belonged, that no advance in knowledge could be made except by the direct exploration of the universe, and that the authority of schoolmen, Aristotelians, and the like, must be broken down before a step could be made in the right direction. This germ of modern science is sufficiently familiar to us in the exposition of Bacon. Line 12: repeats the same idea. Facts presented by Nature are of more value than any Ipse dixit. Line 14: he compares himself not without reason to Prometheus; for twenty-five years spent in prison were his reward for the revelation which has added a new sphere to human thought.
II. The bitter words of this sonnet will not seem unmerited to those who have studied Italian poetry in the Cinque Cento—the refined playthings of verse, the romances, and the burlesque nonsense, which amused a corrupt though highly cultivated age.
III. Campanella held the doctrine of an Anima Mundi in the fullest and deepest sense of the term. The larger and more complex the organism, the more it held, in his opinion, of thought and sentient life. Thus the stars, in the language of Aristotle, are [Greek: thiotera aemon]. Compare Sonnets VIII., XIX.
IV. Though the material seat of the mind is so insignificant, the mind itself is infinite, analogous to God in its capacity. Aristarchus and Metrodorus symbolise, perhaps, the spheres of literature and mathematics. This infinitude of the intellect is our real proof of God, our inner witness of the Deity. We may arrive at God by reasoning; we may trust authority; but it is only by impregnating our minds with God in Nature that we come into immediate contact with Him. Cp. Sonnet VI., last line.
V. The theme of this sonnet is the well-known Baconian principle of the interrogation of Nature. The true philosopher must go straight to the universe, and not confine himself to books. Cp. Sonnets I., LV., LVI.
VI. A further development of the same thought. Tyrants, hypocrites, sophists are the three plagues of humanity, standing between our intellect and God, who is the source of freedom, goodness, and true wisdom. In the last line Campanella expresses his opinion that God is knowable by an immediate act of perception analogous to the sense of taste: Se tutti al Senno non rendiamo il gusto. Compare Sonnet IV., last line.
VII. Ignorance is the parent of tyranny, sophistry, hypocrisy; and the arms against this trinity of error are power, wisdom, love, the three main attributes of God.
VIII. Human egotism inclines men to deny the spiritual life of the universe, to favour their own nation, to love their individual selves exclusively, to eliminate the true God from the world, to worship false gods fashioned from them selves, and at last to fancy themselves central and creative in the Cosmos. Adami calls this sonnet scoprimento stupendo.
IX. The quatrains set forth the condition of the soul besotted with self love. We may see in this picture a critique of Machiavelli’s Principe, which was for Campanella the very ideal portrait of a tyrant. The love of God, rightly understood, places man en rapport with all created things. S. Francis, for example, loved not only his fellow men, but recognised the brotherhood of birds and fishes.
X. Ignorance, the source of all our miseries, blinds us to celestial beauty and makes us follow carnal lust. Yet what is best in sexual love is the radiance of heavenly beauty shining through the form of flesh. This sonnet receives abundant illustration in Michael Angelo’s poems.
XI, XII. Two sonnets on the condition of the philosopher in a world that understands him not. The first expresses that sense of inborn royalty which sustained Campanella through his long martyrdom. The second expands the picture drawn of the philosopher in Plato’s Republic after his return to the cave from the region of truth.
XIII. Campanella frequently expressed his theological fatalism by this metaphor of a comedy. God wrote the drama which men have to play. In this life we cannot understand our parts. We act what is appointed for us, and it is only when the comedy is finished, that we shall see how good and evil, happiness and misery, were all needed by the great life of the universe. The following stanza from one of his Canzoni may be cited in illustration:
War, ignorance, fraud, tyranny,
Death, homicide, abortion,
woe—
These to the world are fair,
as we
Reckon the chase or gladiatorial
show
To pile our hearth we fell
the tree,
Kill bird or beast our strength
to stay,
The vines, the hives our wants
obey—
Like spiders spreading nets,
we take and slay
As tragedy gives men delight,
So the exchange of death and
strife
Still yields a pleasure infinite
To the great world’s
triumphant life
Nay seeming ugliness and pain
Avert returning Chaos’
reign—
Thus the whole world’s
a comedy,
And they who by philosophy
Unite themselves to God, will
see
In ugliness and evil nought
But beauteous masks—oh,
mirthful thought!
XIV. The same theme is continued with a further development. Men among themselves play their own comedy, but do not rightly assign the parts. They make kings of slavish souls, and elevate the impious to the rank of saints. They ignore their true and natural leaders, and stone the real prophets.
XV. Between the false kings of men, who owe their thrones to accident, and the really royal, who by chance of birth or station are a prey to tyrants, there is everlasting war. Yet the spirit of the martyrs survives, and long after their death they rule.
XVI. True kinghood is independent of royal birth or power or ensigns. High moral and intellectual qualities make the natural kings of men, and these are so rarely found in sceptred families that a republic is the safest form of government. See Sonnets XXXI., XXXVII.
XVII. As men mistake their kings, so they mistake the saints. The true spirit of Christ is ignored, and if Christ were to return to earth, they would persecute him, even as they persecute those who follow him most closely in their lives and doctrines.
XVIII. Christ symbolises and includes all saintly truth-seeking souls. Compare the three last lines of this sonnet with the three last lines of No. XV. and No. XX.
XIX., XX., XXI. Expanding the same themes, Campanella contrasts the ignorance of self-love with the divine illumination of the true philosopher, and insists that, in spite of persecution and martyrdom, saintly and truth-seeking souls will triumph.
XXII. Resumes the thought of No. X. If only the soul of man, infinite in its capacity, could be enamoured of God, it would at once work miracles and attain to Deity.
XXIII. A bitter satire on love in the seventeenth century. Lines 9-11: as Adami sometimes says, qui legit intelligat. Line 12: la squilla mia is a pun on Campanella’s name. He means that he has shown the world a more excellent way of love. Cp. No. XXII.
XXIV. The essence of nobility is subjected to the same critique as kinghood in No. XVI. Line 11: the Turk is Europe’s foe. Campanella praises the Turks because they had no hereditary nobility, and conferred honours on men according to their actions.
XXV. That this sonnet should have been written by a Dominican monk in a Neapolitan prison in the first half of the seventeenth century, is truly note-worthy. It expresses the essence of democracy in a critique of the then existing social order.
XXVI. A very obscure piece of writing. The first quatrain lays down the principle that ill-doing brings its own inevitable punishment. The second distinguishes between the unblessed suffering which plagues the soul, and that which we welcome as a process of purgation. The first terzet makes heaven and hell respectively consist of a clean and a burdened conscience. The second, referring to a legend of S. Peter’s controversy with Simon Magus, finds a proof of immortality in this condition of conscience.
XXVII. A bold and perilous image of the Machiavellian Prince, who drains the commonwealth for his own selfish pleasures. The play upon the words mentola and mente in the first line is hardly capable of reproduction.
XXVIII. Adami says in a note: Questo sonetto e fatto perche l’intendano pochi; ne io voglio dichiararlo. Under these circumstances it is dangerous to attempt an explanation. Yet something may be hazarded. Line 1: the lady is Italy. Line 3: the stranger races are Rome’s vassals. Line 7: Dinah is again Italy(?). Line 8: Simeon and Levi are the Princes of Italy and the Papacy. Line 9: Jerusalem probably stands for Rome. Line 10: Nazareth is the Gospel of Christ, and Athens is philosophy. Here again Adami warns us: qui legit intelligat. Line 13: a critique of the ruinous policy of calling strangers in to interfere in Italian affairs.
XXIX. Line 2: Attila is meant. The Venetian Lagoons were the refuge of the last and best Italians of the Roman age, when the incursions of the barbarians destroyed the classical civility. Line 12: alludes to the fixity of the Venetian Constitution and the deliberate caution of Venetian policy.
XXX. The quatrains describe the old power of Genoa, who conquered Pisa, abased Venice, planted colonies in the East, and discovered America. Line 10: throws the blame of Genoese decrepitude upon the nobles.
XXXI. Campanella praises the Poles for their elective monarchy, but blames them for choosing the scions of royal houses, instead of seeking out the real kings of men, such as he described in No. XVI.
XXXII. A similar criticism of the Swiss, who played so important and yet so contemptible a part in the Italian wars of the sixteenth century. With the terzets compare No. XXV. Line 11: stands thus in the original—La croce bianca e’l prato si contende.
XXXIII. A clever adaptation of the parable of the Samaritan, conceived and executed in the spirit of a modern poet like A.H. Clough.
XXXIV. Line 4: the hypocritical priest makes profit by preaching for holiness what is really hurtful to the soul. Lines 5-11 contrast the acknowledged sinners with the covert and crafty pretenders to virtue. Line 8: I have ventured to correct the punctuation. D’Ancona reads:
E poco e il male in cui poco e l’inganno. Ti puoi guardar:
but I am not sure that I am justified in the sense I put upon the verb guardarsi.
XXXV. A similar arraignment of impostors, comparing perfidious priests with the foulest literary scoundrel of the age, Pietro Aretino. The first terzet in the original is obscure.
XXXVI. I do not understand the allusion in the last line. The whole sonnet is directed against hypocritical priests.
XXXVII., XXXVIII., XXXIX. A commentary on the first clauses of the Lord’s Prayer. Campanella tells the Italians they have no right to call themselves men, the children of God in heaven, while they bow to tyrants worse than beasts, and believe the lying priests who call that adulation loyalty. If they free their souls from this vile servitude, they may then pray with hopeful heart for the coming upon earth of God’s kingdom, which shall satisfy poets, philosophers, and prophets with more than they had dreamed. It will be noticed that the rhymes are carried from sonnet to sonnet; so that the three form one poem, described by Adami as sonetto trigemino. In XXXVII., 13, I have corrected cenno into senno. In XXXIX., 1, I have ventured to render con ogni istanza by with every hour that flies, though istanza is not istante.
XL., XLL, XLII. These three sonnets, though not linked by rhymes, form a series, predicting the speedy overthrow of tyrants, sophists, hypocrites—Campanella’s natural enemies—and the coming of a better age for human society. They were probably written early, when his heart was still hot with the hopes of a new reign of right and reason, which even he might help to inaugurate. The eagle, bear, lion, crow, fox, wolf, etc., are the evil principalities and powers of earth. No. XL., line 9: the giants are, I think, those lawless, selfish, anti-social forces idealised by Machiavelli in his Principe, as Campanella read that treatise—the strong men and mighty ones of an impious and godless world. No. XLL, line 4: concerning Taida, Sinon, Giuda, ed Omero, Adami says: ’These are the four evangelists of the dark age of Abaddon.’ Thais is a symbol of lechery; Sinon of fraud; Judas of treason; Homer of lying fiction. So at least I read the allegory. No. XLII., lines 9-14 are noticeable, since they set forth Campanella’s philosophical or evangelical communism, for a detailed exposition of which see the Civitas Solis.
XLIII. Invited to write a comedy—and it will be here remembered that Giordano Bruno had composed Il Candelaio—Campanella replied with this impassioned outburst of belief in the approaching end of the world. It belongs probably to his early manhood.
XLIV., XLV. Adami heads these two sonnets with this title: Sopra i colori delle vesti. It is a fact that under the Spanish tyranny black clothes were almost universally adopted by the Italians, as may be seen in the picture galleries of Florence and Genoa. Campanella uses this fashion as a symbol of the internal gloom and melancholy in which the nation was sunk by vice upon the eve of the new age he confidently looked for.
XLVI. The year 1603, made up of centuries seven and nine and years three, was expected by the astrologers to bring a great mutation in the order of our planet. The celestial signs were supposed to reassume the position they had occupied at Christ’s nativity. Campanella, who believed in astrology, looked forward with intense anxiety to this turning-point in modern history. It is clear from the termination of the sonnet that he wrote it some time before the great date; and we are hence perhaps justified in referring the rest of his prophetic poetry to the same early period of his career.
XLVII. Qui legit intelligat, says Adami. Line 7: refers to the outlying vassals of the Roman Empire, who destroyed it, ruled Rome, and afterwards fell under the yoke of the Roman See. Lines 9-14 are an invective against the Papacy.
XLVIII. A sonnet on his own prison. The prison or worse was the doom of all truth-seekers in Campanella’s age.
XLIX. For the understanding of this strange composition Adami offers nothing more satisfactory than mira quante contraposizioni sono in questo sonetto. The contrast is maintained throughout between the philosopher in the freedom of his spirit and the same man in the limitations of his prisoned life. Line 12 I do not rightly understand. Line 14 refers to Paradise.
L. There is an allusion in this sonnet to an obscure passage in Campanella’s life. It seems he was condemned to the galleys (see line 12); and this sentence was remitted on account of his real or feigned madness. We should infer from the poem itself that his madness was simulated; but Adami, who ought to have known the facts from his own lips, writes: quando brucio il letto, e divenne pazzo o vero o finto. Line 12: I have translated l’astratto by the mystic; astratto is assorto, or lost in ecstatic contemplation.
LI. To this incomprehensible string of proverbs Adami adds, ironically perhaps: questo e assai noto ed arguto e vero. It is an answer to certain friends, officers and barons, who accused him of not being able to manage his affairs. He answers that they might as well bring the same accusation against Christ and all the sages. Line 3: I have ventured to read e for e as the only chance of getting a meaning. Line 8: seems to mean that he would not accept life and freedom at the price of concealing his opinions.
LII. The same theme is rehandled. Lines 1-4: Campanella argued that a man’s mental life extends over all that he grasps of the world’s history. Line 5: the Italian for mite is marmeggio, which means, I think, a cheese-worm. The eclipse of Campanella’s sun is his imprisonment. Lines 7 and 8 I do not well understand in the Italian. Line 11: ’Ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,’ Lines 12-14: saints and sages are made perfect by suffering.
LIII. A singular argument concerning prayer. Campanella says it is impious to hope to change the order and facts of the world, arranged by God, except in the single category of time. He therefore thinks it lawful for him to ask, and for God to grant, a shortening of the season of his suffering. See the Canzone translated by me, forming Appendix I.
LIV. Another sonnet referring to his life in prison. He asks God how he can prosper if his friends all fail him for various reasons. Lines 9-11 refer to the visit of a foe in disguise who came to him in prison and promised him liberty, probably with a view to extracting from him admissions of state-treason or of heresy. See the Canzone translated in Appendix I. The last three lines seem to express his unalterable courage, and his readiness to act if only God will give him trustworthy instruments and fill him with His own spirit. The Dantesque language of the last line is almost incapable of reproduction:
Ch’ io m’ intuassi come tu t’ immii.
LV. Campanella tells his friend that such trivial things as pastoral poems will not immortalise him. He bids him seek, not outside in worn out fictions, but within his own soul, for the spirit of true beauty, turn to God for praise, instead of to a human audience, and go with the tabula rasa of childlike intelligence into God’s school of Nature. Compare Nos I., V.
LVI. Campanella recognised in Telesio the founder of the new philosophy, which discarded the ancients and the schoolmen. Line 3: the tyrant is Aristotle. Lines 5 and 6: Bombino and Montano are the poets. Lines 7-9: Cavalcante and Gaieta were disciples of the Cosentine Academy founded by Telesio. Line 9: our saint, la gran donna, is the new philosophy. Line 12: my tocsin, mia squilla, is a pun on Campanella’s name.
LVII. Rudolph von Bunau set himself at the age of sixteen to philosophise, travelled with Adami, and with him visited Campanella in prison at Naples. Campanella cast his horoscope and predicted for him a splendid career, exhorting him to make war upon the pernicious school of philosophers, who encumbered the human reason with frauds and figments, and prevented the free growth of a better method.
LVIII. Adami, to whom we owe the first edition of these sonnets, visited Campanella in the Castle of S. Elmo, having wandered through many lands, like Diogenes, in search of a man. Line 5: this, says Adami, ’refers to a dream or vision of a sword, great and marvellous, with three triple joints, and arms, and other things, discovered by Tobia Adami, which the author interpreted by his primalities’—that is, I suppose, by the trinity of power, love, wisdom, mentioned in No. VII. Line 6: Abaddon is the opposite of Christ, the lord of the evil of the age. Cp. note to No. XLI.
LIX. This is in some respects the most sublime and most pathetic of Campanella’s sonnets. He is the Prometheus (see last line of No. I.) who will not slay himself, because he cannot help men by his death, and because his belief in the permanency of sense and thought makes him fear lest he should carry his sufferings into another life. God’s will with regard to him is hidden. He does not even know what sort of life he lived before he came into his present form of flesh. Philip, King of Spain, has increased the discomforts of his dungeon, but Philip can do nothing which God has not decreed, and God never by any possibility can err.
LX. Arguments from design make us infer an all wise, all good Maker of the world. The misery and violence and sin of animate beings make us infer an evil and ignorant Ruler of the world. But this discord between the Maker and Ruler of the world is only apparent, and the grounds of the contradiction will in due time be revealed. See No. XIII. and note.
I have translated one Canzone out of Campanella’s collection, partly as a specimen of his style in this kind of composition, partly because it illustrates his personal history and throws light on many of the sonnets. It is the first of three prayers to God from his prison, entitled by Adami Orazioni tre in Salmodia Metafisicale congiunte insieme.
Almighty God! what though
the laws of Fate
Invincible, and this long
misery,
Proving my prayers not merely
spent in vain
But heard and granted crosswise,
banish me
Far from Thy sight,—still
humbly obstinate
I turn to Thee. No other
hopes remain.
Were there another God with
vows to gain,
To Him for succour I would
surely go:
Nor could I be called impious,
if I turned
In this great agony from one
who spurned,
To one who bade me come and
cured my woe.
Nay, Lord! I babble vainly.
Help! I cry,
Before the temple where Thy
reason burned,
Become a mosque of imbecility!
Well know I that there are
no words which can
Move Thee to favour him for
whom Thy grace
Was not reserved from all
eternity.
Repentance in Thy counsel
finds no place:
Nor can the eloquence of mortal
man
Bend Thee to mercy, when Thy
sure decree
Hath stablished that this
frame of mine should be
Rent by these pangs that flesh
and spirit tire.
Nay if the whole world knows
my martyrdom—
Heaven, earth, and all that
in them have their home—
Why tell the tale to Thee,
their Lord and Sire?
And if all change is death
or some such state,
Thou deathless God, to whom
for help I come,
How shall I make Thee change,
to change my fate?
Nathless for grace I once
more sue to Thee,
Spurred on by anguish sore
and deep distress:—
Yet have I neither art nor
voice to plead
Before Thy judgment-seat of
righteousness.
It is not faith, it is not
charity,
Nor hope that fails me in
my hour of need;
And if, as some men teach,
the soul is freed
From sin and quickened to
deserve Thy grace
By torments suffered on this
earth below,
The Alps have neither ice,
I ween, nor snow
To match my purity before
Thy face!
For prisons fifty, tortures
seven, twelve years
Of want and injury and woe—
These have I borne, and still
I stand ringed round with fears.
We lay all wrapped with darkness:
for some slept
The sleep of ignorance, and
players played
Music to sweeten that vile
sleep for gold:
While others waked, and hands
of rapine laid
On honours, wealth, and blood;
or sexless crept
Into the place of harlots,
basely bold.—
I lit a light:—like
swarming bees, behold!
Stripped of their sheltering
gloom, on me
Sleepers and wakers rush to
wreak their spite:
Their wounds, their brutal
joys disturbed by light,
Their broken bestial sleep
fill them with jealousy.—
Thus with the wolves the silly
sheep agreed
Against the valiant dogs to
fight;
Then fell the prey of their
false friends’ insatiate greed.
Help, mighty Shepherd!
Save Thy lamp, Thy hound,
From wolves that ravin and
from thieves that prey!
Make known the whole truth
to the witless crowd!
For if my light, my voice,
are cast away—
If sinfulness in these Thy
gifts be found—
The sun that rules in heaven
is disallowed.
Thou knowest without wings
I cannot fly:
Give me the wings of grace
to speed my flight!
Mine eyes are always turned
to greet Thy light:
Is it my crime if still it
pass me by?
Thou didst free Bocca and
Gilardo; these,
Worthless, are made the angels
of Thy might.—
Hast Thou lost counsel?
Shall Thine empire cease?
With Thee I speak: Lord,
thou dost understand!
Nor mind I how mad tongues
my life reprove.
Full well I know the world
is ’neath Thine eye.
And to each part thereof belongs
Thy love:
But for the general welfare
wisely planned
The parts must suffer change;—they
do not die,
For nature ebbs and flows
eternally;—
But to such change we give
the name of Death
Or Evil, whensoe’er
we feel the strife
Which for the universe is
joy and life,
Though for each part it seems
mere lack of breath.—
So in my body every part I
see
With lives and deaths alternate
rife,
All tending to its vital unity.
Thus then the Universe grieves
not, and I
Mid woes innumerable languish
still
To cheer the whole and every
happier part.—
Yet, if each part is suffered
by Thy will
To call for aid—as
Thou art God most High,
Who to all beings wilt Thy
strength impart;
Who smoothest every change
by secret art,
With fond care tempering the
force of fate,
Necessity and concord, power
and thought,
And love divine through all
things subtly wrought—
I am persuaded, when I iterate
My prayers to Thee, some comfort
I must find
For these pangs poison-fraught,
Or leave the sweet sharp lust
of life behind.
The Universe hath nought that
changes not,
Nor in its change feels not
the pangs of pain,
Nor prays not unto God to
ease that woe.
Mid these are many who the
grace obtain
Of aid from Thee:—thus
Thou didst rule their lot:
And many who without Thy help
must go.
How shall I tell toward whom
Thy favours flow,
Seeing I sat not at Thy council-board?
One argument at least doth
hearten me
To hope those prayers may
not unanswered be,
Which reason and pure thoughts
to me afford:
Since often, if not always,
Thou dost will
In Thy deep wisdom, Lord,
Best laboured soil with fairest
fruits to fill.
The tilth of this my field
by plough and hoe
Yields me good hope—but
more the fostering sun
Of Sense divine that quickens
me within,
Whose rays those many minor
stars outshone—
That it is destined in high
heaven to show
Mercy, and grant my prayer;
so I may win
The end Thy gifts betoken,
enter in
The realm reserved for me
from earliest time.
Christ prayed but ‘If
it may be,’ knowing well
He might not shun that cup
so terrible:
His angel answered, that the
law sublime
Ordained his death. I
prayed not thus, and mine—
Was mine then sent from Hell?—
Made answer diverse from that
voice divine.
Go song, go tell my Lord—’Lo!
he who lies
Tortured in chains within
a pit for Thee,
Cries, how can flight be free
Wingless?—Send
Thy word down, or Thou
Show that fate’s wheel
turns not iniquity,
And that in heaven there is
no lip that lies.’—
Yet, song, too boldly flies
Thy shaft; stay yet for this
that follows now!
The ‘Rivista Europea’ of June 1875 publishes an article by Signor V. de Tivoli concerning an inedited sonnet of Michael Angelo, which he deciphered from the Autograph, written upon the back of one of the original drawings in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford. This drawing formed part of the Ottley and Lawrence Collection. It represents horses in various attitudes, together with a skirmish between a mounted soldier and a group of men on foot. Signor de Tivoli not only prints the text with all its orthographical confusions, abbreviations, and alterations; but he also adds what he modestly terms a restoration of the sonnet. Of this restoration I have made the subjoined version in rhyme, though I frankly admit that the difficulties of the text, as given in the rough by Signor de Tivoli, seem to me insuperable, and that his readings, though ingenious, cannot in my opinion be accepted as absolutely certain. He himself describes the MS. as a palimpsest, deliberately defaced by Michael Angelo, from which the words originally written have to be recovered in many cases by a process of conjecture. That the style of the restoration is thoroughly Michael Angelesque, will be admitted by all students of Signor Guasti’s edition. The only word I felt inclined to question, is donne in line 13, where I should have expected donna. But I am informed that about this word there is no doubt. The sonnet itself ranks among the less interesting and the least finished compositions of the poet’s old age.
Thrice blest was I what time
thy piercing dart
I could withstand
and conquer in days past:
But now my breast
with grief is overcast;
Against my will
I weep, and suffer smart.
And if those shafts, aimed
with so fierce an art,
The mark of my
frail bosom over-passed,
Now canst thou
take revenge with blows at last
From those fair
eyes which must consume my heart.
O Love, how many a net, how
many a snare
Shuns through
long years the bird by fate malign,
Only at last to
die more piteously!
Thus love hath let me run
as free as air,
Ladies, through
many a year, to make me pine
In sad old age,
and a worse death to die.
The following translations of a madrigal, a quatrain, and a stanza by Michael Angelo, may be worth insertion here for the additional light they throw upon some of the preceding sonnets—especially upon Sonnets I. and II. and Sonnets LXV.-LXXVII. In my version of the stanza I have followed Michelangelo the younger’s readings.
DIALOGUE OF FLORENCE AND HER EXILES.
Per molti, donna.
’Lady, for joy of lovers
numberless
Thou wast created
fair as angels are.
Sure God hath
fallen asleep in heaven afar,
When one man calls
the bliss of many his!
THE SPEECH OF NIGHT.
Caro m’ e’l sonno.
Sweet is my sleep, but more
to be mere stone,
So long as ruin and dishonour
reign;
To bear nought, to feel nought,
is my great gain;
Then wake me not, speak in
an undertone!
Ohime, ohime!
Ah me! Ah me! whene’er
I think
Of my past years, I find that
none
Among those many years, alas,
was mine;
False hopes and longings vain
have made me pine,
With tears, sighs, passions,
fires, upon life’s brink.
Of mortal loves I have known
every one.
Full well I feel it now; lost
and undone,
From truth and goodness banished
far away,
I dwindle day by day.
Longer the shade, more short
the sunbeams grow;
While I am near to falling,
faint and low.