No More Learning

When, young and glowing, I was but in part
The man I am become in later days;
Ye who have mark'd the changes of my style
From vain despondency to hope as vain,
From him among you, who has felt love's pain,
I hope for pardon, ay, and pity's smile,
Though conscious, now, my passion was a theme,
Long, idly dwelt on by the public tongue,
I blush for all the vanities I've sung,
And find the world's applause a fleeting dream.

The following sonnet (cxxvi. ) is such a gem of Petrarchan and Platonic
homage to beauty that I subjoin my translation of it with the most
sincere avowal of my conscious inability to do it justice.

In what ideal world or part of heaven
Did Nature find the model of that face
And form, so fraught with loveliness and grace,
In which, to our creation, she has given
Her prime proof of creative power above?
What fountain nymph or goddess ever let
Such lovely tresses float of gold refined
Upon the breeze, or in a single mind,
Where have so many virtues ever met,
E'en though those charms have slain my bosom's weal?
He knows not love who has not seen her eyes
Turn when she sweetly speaks, or smiles, or sighs,
Or how the power of love can hurt or heal.

Sonnet lxix. is remarkable for the fineness of its closing thought.

Time was her tresses by the breathing air
Were wreathed to many a ringlet golden bright,
Time was her eyes diffused unmeasured light,
Though now their lovely beams are waxing rare,
Her face methought that in its blushes show'd
Compassion, her angelic shape and walk,
Her voice that seem'd with Heaven's own speech to talk;
At these, what wonder that my bosom glow'd!
A living sun she seem'd--a spirit of heaven.
Those charms decline: but does my passion? No!
I love not less--the slackening of the bow
Assuages not the wound its shaft has given.

The following sonnet is remarkable for its last four lines having
puzzled all the poet's commentators to explain what he meant by the
words "Al man ond' io scrivo e fatta arnica, a questo volta. " I agree
with De Sade in conjecturing that Laura in receiving some of his verses
had touched the hand that presented them, in token of her gratitude.
[O]

In solitudes I've ever loved to abide
By woods and streams, and shunn'd the evil-hearted,
Who from the path of heaven are foully parted;
Sweet Tuscany has been to me denied,
Whose sunny realms I would have gladly haunted,
Yet still the Sorgue his beauteous hills among
Has lent auxiliar murmurs to my song,
And echoed to the plaints my love has chanted.
Here triumph'd, too, the poet's hand that wrote
These lines--the power of love has witness'd this.
Delicious victory! I know my bliss,
She knows it too--the saint on whom I dote.

Of Petrarch's poetry that is not amatory, Ugo Foscolo says with justice,
that his three political canzoni, exquisite as they are in versification
and style, do not breathe that enthusiasm which opened to Pindar's grasp
all the wealth of imagination, all the treasures of historic lore and
moral truth, to illustrate and dignify his strain. Yet the vigour, the
arrangement, and the perspicuity of the ideas in these canzoni of
Petrarch, the tone of conviction and melancholy in which the patriot
upbraids and mourns over his country, strike the heart with such force,
as to atone for the absence of grand and exuberant imagery, and of the
irresistible impetus which peculiarly belongs to the ode.

Petrarch's principal Italian poem that is not thrown into the shape of
the sonnet is his Trionfi, or Triumphs, in five parts. Though not
consisting of sonnets, however, it has the same amatory and constant
allusions to Laura as the greater part of his poetry. Here, as
elsewhere, he recurs from time to time to the history of his passion,
its rise, its progress, and its end. For this purpose, he describes
human life in its successive stages, omitting no opportunity of
introducing his mistress and himself.

1. Man in his youthful state is the slave of love. 2. As he advances in
age, he feels the inconveniences of his amatory propensities, and
endeavours to conquer them by chastity. 3. Amidst the victory which he
obtains over himself, Death steps in, and levels alike the victor and
the vanquished.