Each creature on whose wakeful eyes
    The bright sun pours his golden fire,
    By day a destined toil pursues;
    And, when heaven’s lamps illume the skies,
    All to some haunt for rest retire,
    Till a fresh dawn that toil renews. 
    But I, when a new morn doth rise,
    Chasing from earth its murky shades,
    While ring the forests with delight,
    Find no remission of my sighs;
    And, soon as night her mantle spreads,
    I weep, and wish returning light
    Again when eve bids day retreat,
    O’er other climes to dart its rays;
    Pensive those cruel stars I view,
    Which influence thus my amorous fate;
    And imprecate that beauty’s blaze,
    Which o’er my form such wildness threw. 
    No forest surely in its glooms
    Nurtures a savage so unkind
    As she who bids these sorrows flow: 
    Me, nor the dawn nor sleep o’ercomes;
    For, though of mortal mould, my mind
    Feels more than passion’s mortal glow. 
    Ere up to you, bright orbs, I fly,
    Or to Love’s bower speed down my way,
    While here my mouldering limbs remain;
    Let me her pity once espy;
    Thus, rich in bliss, one little day
    Shall recompense whole years of pain. 
    Be Laura mine at set of sun;
    Let heaven’s fires only mark our loves,
    And the day ne’er its light renew;
    My fond embrace may she not shun;
    Nor Phoebus-like, through laurel groves,
    May I a nymph transform’d pursue! 
    But I shall cast this mortal veil on earth,
    And stars shall gild the noon, ere such bright scenes have birth.

    NOTT.

CANZONE I.

Nel dolce tempo della prima etade.

HIS SUFFERINGS SINCE HE BECAME THE SLAVE OF LOVE.

      In the sweet season when my life was new,
    Which saw the birth, and still the being sees
    Of the fierce passion for my ill that grew,
    Fain would I sing—­my sorrow to appease—­
    How then I lived, in liberty, at ease,
    While o’er my heart held slighted Love no sway;
    And how, at length, by too high scorn, for aye,
    I sank his slave, and what befell me then,
    Whereby to all a warning I remain;
    Although my sharpest pain
    Be elsewhere written, so that many a pen
    Is tired already, and, in every vale,
    The echo of my heavy sighs is rife,
    Some credence forcing of my anguish’d life;
    And, as her wont, if here my memory fail,
    Be my long martyrdom its saving plea,
    And the one thought which so its torment made,
    As every feeling else to throw in shade,
    And make me of myself forgetful be—­
    Ruling life’s inmost core, its bare rind left for me.