104. ‘L’aspecta vertù, che ’n voi fioriva’

The visible courage, that flowered in you

when Love too started to war against you,

produces fruit now, equal to the flower,

so that my hopes come to shore.

And so my heart tells me to write something

that regard for your name might increase,

since no other method is so certain

to recreate a living person from the marble.

Do you think that Caesar or Marcellus

or Paulus or Africanus will ever live

by means of the anvil and the hammer?

My dear Pandolfo, in the end those works

are fragile, but my labour’s such

as can by fame make a man immortal.

Note: Addressed to Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. Petrarch names four Roman generals.

‘Landing of Scipio Africanus at Carthage’ - Anonymous (ca. 1555), The Rijksmuseum