English

WHEREIN HE PLEADS WITH LOVE, THE CAUSE OF HIS OFFENDING, TO INTERCEDE FOR HIS PARDON

O Love, I err and I confess my error,
As one who writhes in fire, whose inner fire
Feeds and augments his grief, while on that pyre
Reason is martyred and recants in terror.
I fought my passion (it grew stronger, dearer)
So that I never might with dark desire
Affront her calm sweet face: I tried; I tire:
The curb slips, the sick soul shouts bolder, clearer.
Wherefore, if at an unaccustomed height
My soul shoot, thine the act, who can so prod,

WHEREIN HE FEARS LONGER TO BE ALONE

O little room, my harbour, my defence
From the rude buffet of a daily storm,
Thou art the fountain when the wild tears swarm
Out of my soul in the night's nude innocence!
O bed, that lulled with quiet influence
Many a turmoil, Love's hand, white and warm,
Suspends above thee black doubts multiform
As from a bowl and banishes me thence!
But more than rest and solitude, I rush
From my sole self and melancholy thought
Whose vain pursuit the wings of fancy push

HE IS PROUD TO SHARE HER AFFLICTION

What strange adventure struck me when from one
Of the two loveliest eyes that ever glowed,
The while I saw it smitten by a cloud
Of pain, some rare compulsion seized my own?
I had come back, as curs might for a bone,
To break a dreary fast at her abode,
To see her once: ah, Heaven and Love bestowed
More grace than all their gifts in unison:
When from the right eye, from that well of flame
Of my dear Lady to my own there came
The sweet contagion, sweeter, being shared;

WHEREIN HE ENLARGES UPON THE DOLOROUS CONSEQUENCES OF UNCURBED ANGER

Though brilliant stone and bronze depict the son
Of Philip conquering empires in his path,
That conqueror was conquered by his wrath,
Left for the moment less than Macedon;
Wrath to such frenzy swept brave Tydeus on
That, dying, he devoured his foe; how hath
The fury blinded Sylla in his bath,
And in the end brought black oblivion!
And Valentinian was well aware
Of such sad consequence; and Ajax failed,

LAURA'S EYES ARE STRICKEN WITH A STRANGE MALADY

I lived so much at peace, so well content,
No sorrow knocked, no envy opened door;
If fortune favoured other Loves the more,
One pang of mine outweighed their increment.
But those eyes from whose beauty I repent
Never my wounds, nor their long siege deplore,
So dark, so heavy clouds upon them pour,
My life is drowned in them and quite forespent.
O Nature, mother hard and merciful,
Whence comes thy power, whence thy whims perverse

HER RETURN BANISHES SORROW

I wept, but sing now; its celestial shower
That living sun does not from me conceal,
But pure love in that blazon must reveal
His holy purposes and his sweet power,
Ah Love, such floods of grief leap to devour
The space that spreads beneath my friendless heel,
That neither bridge nor ford, nor oar, nor sail
Can push escape, nor pinions speed the hour!
O in such black abysms do I grope,
So distant seems the prospect of a shore
Thought may not span it, nor the laurelled hope

WHEREIN, THOUGH SORE BESTEAD WITH PAIN, NATHELESS HE CONSIDERS HIMSELF THE HAPPIEST OF MEN

I sang, who now am sad, nor found I more
Sweetness in song than now in grief I find:
For on the cause, not consequence, inclined,
Still do my senses toward the summits soar,
Whence, whether she be mild or stubborn, or
Act in some cruel wise or in some kind,
I equally endure, nor can weights bind,
Nor point of anger through my armour bore.
Let therefore Love and Laura, destiny
And this the world continue in their course,

WHEREIN HIS LOVE GREW LIKE THE LAUREL

Love, forcing wide my heart with his great hand,
Planted therein, as in its proper seat,
A laurel whose bright emerald could compete
With the most brilliant jewels of the land:
Furrowed by pen, by the heart's hunger fanned,
Cooled by the soft rain that fell salt and sweet,
It grew in grace and poured such fragrant heat
As no Arabian rivals could withstand.
Renown, proud honour, virtue, elegance,
Purest perfection in celestial form —

WHEREIN HE IS ENVIOUS OF THE WIND IN HER HAIR, THE WATER THAT RUNS TOWARD HER

Breeze that with laughter moving, dancing, weaving,
Loosens and disarranges those crisp tresses,
Clouding her breast in golden wildernesses,
Only to twist new coils to new conceiving,
You play about those eyes, clinging and cleaving —
Those eyes whose pointed flames this heart confesses —
This heart that, like a fox the loud pack presses,
Stumbles over its shadow with wild heaving.
Methinks she's found — but no, the fancy cheats me!

HE LAMENTS HIS ABSENCE FROM FELICITY

No savage beast lairs lonelier than I,
Never was bird, deprived of young, more lone,
Now that I see no more that face, the one
Sun of my soul, the one sun in the sky.
My chief delight is one incessant sigh;
My food is poison, every bliss is done;
Black is each night, bright is no day — no, none;
And hard as hail the bed on which I lie.
Slumber is of a truth — ah, stubborn jest! —
Death's second self, for it absents the soul
From that dear thought in which alone I live.