English

WHEREIN HIS HOPE IS AS QUENCHLESS AS HER CRUELTY

Love has abandoned me to cold embraces
Which kill me without cause: if I complain,
My martyrdom is doubled and my pain.
(In silence love, though death that love effaces!)
Her furious look can melt the frozen spaces
Of winter's Rhine and split the stone in twain;
Her loveliness is matched by her disdain
And others happy rouse her fierce grimaces.
As for the rest, a thing of marble, breathing
And moving, heart of triple adamant
So hard, my utmost skill is all too scant.

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE SILENCES HIS PURPOSE TO SPEAK

Often, when to my fancy her dear face
The colour of compassion took, I strove
With eloquent tears, with courteous speech to move
My stubborn angel in this piteous case:
But let swift anger for a flash displace
Her pity — and my hopes are vain thereof:
My life, death, good and ill by sovereign Love
Are trusted to her mercy and her grace.
Wherefore, whenever my mouth is moved to speak,
I scarce can bear the burden I proclaim,
By passion rendered timorous and weak.

WHEREIN EXCESS OF LOVE LOCKS HIS TONGUE

Filled with a thought whose beauty makes me shun
My kind and wander in the world alone,
I now and then must roll away the stone,
Pursuing her from whom I ought to run;
And see her pass, O sweet, O cruel one!
And my soul flutters and is almost flown,
And falls back, such armed sighs about her moan,
Love's dear antagonist... I am undone...
Be still, my heart! Do I not see beneath
Her proud and pitiless forehead one mild beam
Of mercy, almost thawing my heart's death?

WHEREIN HOPE WILL OUTLAST LIFE

Love bringing back to mind that princely thought
Which is the old familiar of our lives,
Comforts me well, saying our prospect thrives
As never before, nearer and nearer brought
To heaven. I, who have seen his whispers fraught
With double meanings where half-truth still strives
With deadly untruth, hang between two hives
Suspended, Yea and Nay at quarrel caught.
Meantime the years move on, and I behold
Mirrored in my true glass the traitor Time

WHEREIN HIS LADY SINGS

If Love her lovely eyes to earth compel,
And in a sigh resolving all her soul,
Permit the music of her voice to roll
Heavenward like a soft angelic bell,
My heart, divorced so sweetly from its shell,
(New thoughts, new wishes roused beyond control)
" O Heaven, " it cries, " grant me this golden dole,
That, listening, Death may ravish me as well! "
But ah, the sense enchanted in that mesh
Melodious, the will inflamed to hear
More and yet more of Heaven so wildly near,

TO ONE WHO DESIRED LATIN VERSES OF HIM

Had I not quit that delphic cavern where
The young Apollo first roared prophecies,
Verona, Mantua were not sole to seize
The bayleaf: Florence too might boast an heir;
But since the grotto's inspired spring is bare
And cannot nourish this my land, I please
Some other planet, and with novelties
Of stroke and sickle harvest wheat from tare.
Dried is the olive; elsewhere twists that stream
Whose silver secret source made one high hill
Immortal, thriving in the noblest dream:

WHEREIN NIGHT WITH HER GIFT OF SLEEP VISITS ALL SAVE HIM

It is the vigil dark-eyed silence keeps
By earth and heaven: each bird, each beast in chains
Of silk reposes; Night's black chariot reins
Glitter with stars; the waveless water sleeps.
I wake, brood, burn, shed tears: and though love weeps,
Its one dear reason still the heart retains;
War is the portion no grief, no wrath drains,
But in the thought of her a solace creeps.
Ah me! that sweet and bitter nourishment,
Strange twins, from one bright quenchless fountain come;

WHEREIN HE IS PREPARED TO SUFFER IF ONLY HE MAY NOT OFFEND HIS LADY

O Love, to whom my heart lies open wide —
No thought obscure, each hard pang manifest —
Explore this flaming and unbolted breast,
Behold what from your fierce eyes cannot hide.
Thou knowest for thy sake what trials betide;
Me still from day to day, from plain to crest
Thou drivest, with no heed, while I protest
As on my tortured feet new thorns are tried.
True, I discern the distant beacon light
Toward which, by dark paths, thou goadest me;

WHEREIN HE ENVIES WHATSOEVER OF LOVELY IN NATURE HER PRESENCE MAKES LOVELIER

O rich and happy flowers forever apart
On which my pensive Lady puts her heel!
O golden acres privileged to feel
Her phrase, her footprint pressed upon your heart!
Trees silver green with April's earliest art;
Pale passionate violets; dark grove that can steal
Only so much of sun as may reveal
Your swarthy steeples in a radiant dart!
O comely landscape! O translucent stream
Mirroring her pure face, her intense eyes

WHEREIN HE PROCLAIMS HIS PERILOUS STATE

O straying steps! O blind and busy dreams!
O constant memory! O keen desire!
O passion strong! Heart weak with its own fire!
O eyes, not eyes, but salt and living streams!
O laurel boughs whose difficult garland seems
Guerdon enough to which lords may aspire!
O haunted life! Mirage I must admire
Or wallow else in little sluggard schemes!
O glamorous face where Love has hoarded well
His lash and spur to prick the heart and move
The mind at will — nor heart nor mind to spare!