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by Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

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Title: Sonnets

Author: Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

Release Date: November 26, 2003 [EBook #10314]

Language: English

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THE SONNETS

OF

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI

AND

TOMMASO CAMPANELLA


NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TRANSLATED INTO RHYMED ENGLISH


BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS


AUTHOR OF 'RENAISSANCE IN ITALY' 'STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS' 'SKETCHES
IN ITALY AND GREECE' 'INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTE'



[Greek: Chruseon chalkeia]



1878



_TO

S.F.A._




PREFATORY NOTE.


After some deliberation, and at the risk of offending the sensibility
of scholars, I have adopted the old English spelling of Michael
Angelo's name, feeling that no orthographical accuracy can outweigh the
associations implied in that familiar title. Michael Angelo has a place
among the highest with Homer and Titian, with Virgil and Petrarch, with
Raphael and Paul; nor do I imagine that any alteration for the better
would be effected by substituting for these time-honoured names Homêros
and Tiziano, Vergilius and Petrarca, Raffaello and Paulus.

I wish here to express my heartiest thanks to Signore Pasquale Villari
for valuable assistance kindly rendered in the interpretation of some
difficult passages of Campanella, and to Signore V. de Tivoli for
calling my attention to the sonnet of Michael Angelo deciphered by him
on the back of a drawing in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford.

Portions both of the Introduction and the Translations forming this
volume, have already appeared in the 'Contemporary Review' and the
'Cornhill Magazine.'

DAVOS PLATZ:

_Dec. 1877._



CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTION

PROEM

MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS

CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS

NOTES TO MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS

NOTES TO CAMPANELLA'S SONNETS

APPENDICES




INTRODUCTION.


I.

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.


II.

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 verses, the less he liked or dared to edit
them unaltered. Some of them expressed thoughts and sentiments
offensive to the Church. In some the Florentine patriot spoke over-boldly.
Others exposed their author to misconstruction on the score of
personal morality.[6] All were ungrammatical, rude in versification,
crabbed and obscure in thought--the rough-hewn blockings-out of poems
rather than finished works of art, as it appeared to the scrupulous,
decorous, elegant, and timorous Academician of a feebler age. While
pondering these difficulties, and comparing the readings of his many
manuscripts, the thought occurred to Michelangelo that, between leaving
the poems unpublished and printing them in all their rugged boldness,
lay the middle course of reducing them to smoothness of diction,
lucidity of meaning, and propriety of sentiment.[7] In other words, he
began, as Signer Guasti pithily describes his method, 'to change halves
of lines, whole verses, ideas: if he found a fragment, he completed it:
if brevity involved the thought in obscurity, he amplified: if the
obscurity seemed incurable, he amputated: for superabundant wealth of
conception he substituted vacuity; smoothed asperities; softened
salient lights.' The result was that a medley of garbled phrases,
additions, alterations, and sophistications was foisted on the world as
the veritable product of the mighty sculptor's genius. That
Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor is certain. That he
took the greatest pains in executing his ungrateful and disastrous task
is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence
has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of
the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for
him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet
suffered no less from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the fresco
painter from his follower Daniele da Volterra.

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.


III.

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' Università 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.


IV.

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 knowledge, combined with a belief in the
intuitive forces of the human reason: so that from the first it showed
two sides or faces to the world--the one positive, scientific,
critical, and analytical; the other mystical, metaphysical, subjective.
Modern materialism and modern idealism were both contained in the
audacious guesses of Bruno and Campanella; nor had the time arrived for
clearly separating the two strains of thought, or for attempting a
systematic synthesis of knowledge under one or the other head.

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 works on
metaphysics, mathematics, politics, and aesthetics which Campanella
gave to the press, were composed during his long imprisonment. How they
came to be printed, I do not know; but it is obvious that he cannot
have been strictly debarred from writing by his jailors. In prison,
too, he made both friends and converts. We have seen that we owe the
publication of a portion of his poems to the visit of a German knight.


V.

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._



FOOTNOTES


[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 the
poet's own handwriting. But when we consider that very frequently
Michael Angelo's own autographs give twice as many various readings as
there are lines in a sonnet, when we reflect that we do not always
possess the copies which he finally addressed to his friends, and when,
moreover, we find that their readings (_e.g._ those of the Riccio MS
and those cited by Varchi) differ considerably from Michael Angelo's
rough copies, we must conclude that even the autographs do not
invariably represent these poems in the final form which he adopted.
There is therefore much room left for critical comparison and
selection. We are, in fact, still somewhat in the same position as
Michelangelo the younger. Whether any application of the critical
method will enable us to do again successfully what he so clumsily
attempted--that is, to reproduce a correct text from the _debris_
offered to our selective faculty--I do not feel sure. Meanwhile I am
quite certain that his principle was a wrong one, and that he dealt
most unjustifiably with his material. For this reason I cordially
accept Signor Guasti's labours, with the reservation I have attempted
to express in this note. They have indeed brought us far closer to
Michael Angelo's real text, but we must be careful to remember that we
have not even now arrived with certainty at what he would himself have
printed if he had prepared his own edition for the press.

[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 Natività 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.



PROEM.


_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!





THE SONNETS

OF

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI




I.

_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!



II.

_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.



III.

_TO POPE JULIUS II._

_Signor, se vero è._


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.



IV.

_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?



V.

TO GIOVANNI DA PISTOJA.

_ON THE PAINTING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL._

_I' ho già 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.



VI.

_INVECTIVE AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF PISTOJA._

_I' l' ho, vostra mercè._


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.



VII.

_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.



VIII.

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.



IX.

_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.



X.

TO GANDOLFO PORRINO.

_ON HIS MISTRESS FAUSTINA MANCINA._

_La nuova alta beltà._


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.



XI.

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 learnéd hand with labour new
    Of pen and ink a worthier work hath done,
    What erst you lacked, what still remained her own,
    The power of giving life, is gained for you.
If men in any age with Nature vied
    In beauteous workmanship, they had to yield
    When to the fated end years brought their name.
You, reilluming memories that died,
    In spite of Time and Nature have revealed
    For them and for yourself eternal fame.



XII.

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.



XIII.

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.



XIV.

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?



XIV.

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?



XV.

_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.



XVI.

_LOVE AND ART._

_Sì 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.



XVII.

_THE ARTIST AND HIS WORK._

_Com' esser, donna, può._


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. I, who strive
    With Sculpture, know this well; her wonders live
    In spite of time and death, those tyrants stern.
So I can give long life to both of us
    In either way, by colour or by stone,
    Making the semblance of thy face and mine.
Centuries hence when both are buried, thus
    Thy beauty and my sadness shall be shown,
    And men shall say, 'For her 'twas wise to pine.'



XVIII.

_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.



XIX.

_THE AMULET OF LOVE._

_Io mi son caro assai più._


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.



XX.

_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?



XXI.

_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!



XXII.

_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, blesséd 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!



XXIII.

_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!



XXIV.

_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 thy outward state
    We clearly read, and are so rare and great
    That they adorn none other like to thee!
Love takes me captive; beauty binds my soul;
    Pity and mercy with their gentle eyes
    Wake in my heart a hope that cannot cheat.
What law, what destiny, what fell control,
    What cruelty, or late or soon, denies
    That death should spare perfection so complete?



XXV.

_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.



XXVI.

_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.



XXVII.

_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!



XXVIII.

_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.



XXIX.

_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?



XXX.

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.



XXXI.

To TOMMASO DE' CAVALIERI.

_LOVE'S LORDSHIP._

_A che più 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 arméd Knight's captive and slave confessed.



XXXII.

_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?



XXXIII.

FIRST READING.

_A PRAYER TO NATURE._

AMOR REDIVIVUS.

_Perchè 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!



XXXIII.

SECOND READING.

_A PRAYER TO NATURE._

AMOR REDIVIVUS.

_Sol perchè 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, refined
    Into a heavenly form of nobler mind,
    And dowered with all thine angel purity.
Ah me! and may heaven also keep my sighs,
    My scattered tears preserve and reunite,
    And give to him who loves that fair again!
More happy he perchance shall move those eyes
    To mercy by the griefs my manhood blight,
    Nor lose the kindness that from me is ta'en!



XXXIV.

_LOVE'S FURNACE._

_Sì 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.



XXXV.

_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.



XXXVI.

_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.



XXXVII.

_PERHAPS TO VITTORIA COLONNA._

_LOVE'S SERVITUDE._

_S' alcun legato è 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.



XXXVIII.

_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!



XXXIX.

_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.



XL.

FIRST READING.

_LOVE'S LOADSTONE._

_No so s' è 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.



XL.

SECOND READING.

_LOVE'S LOADSTONE._

_Non so se s' é 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.



XLI.

_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.



XLII.

_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 their might.
The earth that lies bare to the sun, and breeds
    A thousand germs that burgeon and decay--
    This earth is wounded by the ploughman's share:
But only darkness serves for human seeds;
    Night therefore is more sacred far than day,
    Since man excels all fruits however fair.



XLIII.

_THE IMPEACHMENT OF NIGHT._

_Perchè 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.



XLIV.

_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.



XLV.

_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
    He sport and jest, old age need no man blame;
    For loving things divine implies no shame.
                The soul that knows her aim,
    Sins not by loving God's own counterfeit--
    Due measure kept, and bounds, and order meet.



XLVI.

_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?



XLVII.

_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.



XLVIII.

_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.



XLIX.

_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?



L.

_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.



LI.

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.



LI.

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!
    Give back the buried face once angel-bright,
    That taxed all Nature's art and industry.
O Love! an old man finds it hard to chase
    Thy flying pinions! Thou hast left thy nest;
    Nor is my heart as light as heretofore.
Put thy gold arrows to the string once more:
    Then if Death hear my prayer and grant me grace,
    My grief I shall forget, again made blest.



LII.

_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.



LIII.

_CELESTIAL AND EARTHLY LOVE._

_Non è 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.



LIV.

_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.



LV.

_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.



LVI.

FIRST READING.

_HEAVEN-BORN BEAUTY._

_Per ritornar là._


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.



LVI.

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.



LVII.

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!



LVII.

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.



LVIII.

_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.



LIX.

_LOVE IS A REFINER'S FIRE._

_Non più 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 nor years undo.
The fire whereof I speak, is my great cheer;
    Such power it hath to renovate and raise
    Me who was almost numbered with the dead;
And since by nature fire doth find its sphere
    Soaring aloft, and I am all ablaze,
    Heavenward with it my flight must needs be sped.



LX.

FIRST READING.

_LOVE'S JUSTIFICATION._

_Ben può 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.



LX.

SECOND READING.

_LOVE'S JUSTIFICATION._

_Ben può 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.



LXI.

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.



LXII.

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.



LXIII.

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?



LXIV.

AFTER THE DEATH OF VITTORIA COLONNA.

_A WASTED BRAND._

_Qual maraviglia è._


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!



LXV.

TO GIORGIO VASARI.

_ON THE BRINK OF DEATH._

_Giunto è già._


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.



LXVI.

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.



LXVII.

_A PRAYER FOR FAITH._

_Non è più 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.



LXVIII.

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.



LXIX.

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?



LXX.

_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.



LXXI.

_A PRAYER FOR PURIFICATION._

_Forse perchè 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.



LXXII.

_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.



LXXIII.

_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.



LXXIV.

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.



LXXIV.

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 me far away
    From every thought that lures my soul from Thee!
Yea, if at any hour, through grace of Thine,
    The fervent zeal of love and faith that cheer
    And fortify the soul, my heart assail.
Since nought achieve these mortal powers of mine,
    Plant, like a saint in heaven, that virtue here;
    For, lacking Thee, all good must faint and fail.



LXXV.

_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!



LXXVI.

_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 damnéd fiends redoubled:
    Man only joyed, who gained baptismal birth.



LXXVII.

_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 SONNETS OF TOMMASO CAMPANELLA



I.

_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!



II.

_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.



III.

_THE UNIVERSE._

_Il mondo è 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!



IV.

_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.



V.

_THE BOOK OF NATURE._

_Il mondo è 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!



VI.

_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.



VII.

_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,
    Injustice, idleness, lust, fury, fear,
    Beneath these three great plagues securely hide.
Grounded on blind self-love, the offspring dear
    Of Ignorance, they flourish and abide:--
    Wherefore to root up Ignorance I'm here!



VIII.

_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.



IX.

_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!



X.

_EARTHLY AND DIVINE LOVE._

_Se Dio ci dà 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.



XI.

_THE PHILOSOPHER._

_Gran fortuna è '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.



XII.

_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.



XIII.

_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.



XIV.

_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.



XV.

_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.



XVI.

_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.



XVII.

_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.



XVIII.

_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.



XIX.

_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.



XX.

_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!



XXI.

_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 but agony,
    Whose pains were light matched with His victory,
    When the world's power to harm Him was defied?
Why rather speak and write not of the realm
    He rules in heaven, and soon will bring below
    Unto the praise and glory of His name?
Ah foolish crowd! This world's thick vapours whelm
    Your eyes unworthy of that glorious show,
    Blind to His splendour, bent upon His shame.



XXII.

_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.



XXIII.

_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!



XXIV.

_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?



XXV.

_THE PEOPLE._

_Il popolo è 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.



XXVI.

_CONSCIENCE._

_Seco ogni coif a è 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.



XXVII.

_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!



XXVIII.

_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:
    Nor seems it now that Dinah's shame can gird
    Simeon or Levi to avenge her fate.
If then Jerusalem doth not repair
    To Nazareth or Athens, where did reign
    Wisdom of God or man in days of yore,
None shall arise her honours to restore:
    For Herods are all strangers; when they swear
    To save the Saviour's seed, their oath is vain.



XXIX.

_TO VENICE._

_Nuova arca di Noè._


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.



XXX.

_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!



XXXI.

_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.



XXXII.

_TO THE SWISS._

_Se voi più 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!



XXXIII.

_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.



XXXIV.

_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!



XXXV.

_SOPHISTS._

_Nessun ti verrà 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,
    And in the cynic orgies boldly joined;
    His ribald jests had flowers and thorns combined--
    A frank fair list including life and death,
For fun, not fraud. It shames him to be found
    Less vile than those who cannot bear to see
    Their sink of filth laid open to the ground:
Wherefore they shut our mouths, our books impound,
    Garble with lies each sentence that may be
    Cited to prove their foul hypocrisy.



XXXVI.

_AGAINST HY