23. ‘Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade’

I’ll sing of the sweet time of my first youth,

that saw the birth and the first leafing

of fierce desire that blossomed to my hurt,

since grief is rendered less bitter by being sung:

I’ll sing of when I lived in liberty,

while Love was disdained in my house.

Then follow it with how I scorned him

too deeply, and say what came of it,

of how I was made an example to many men:

even though my harsh ruin

is written of elsewhere, so that a thousand pens

are not yet weary of it, and almost every valley

echoes again to the sound of my deep sighs

that add credence to my painful life.

And if memory does not aid me

as it once did, blame my sufferings,

and one thought which is anguished

it makes me turn my back on every other,

and by the same light makes me forget myself:

ruling what is inside me, I the shell.

I say that many years had passed

since Love tried his first assault on me,

so that I had lost my juvenile aspect,

and frozen thoughts about my heart

had almost made a covering of enamel,

so that its hardness left nothing lacking.

Still no tears had bathed my cheeks,

my sleep unbroken, and what I could not feel

seemed like a marvel to me in others.

Alas what am I? What was I?

Life is ended, and evening crowns the day.

That savage adversary of whom I speak,

seeing at last that not a single shot

of his had even pierced my clothes,

brought a powerful lady to help him,

against whom intellect, or force,

or asking mercy never were or are of value:

and the two transformed me to what I am,

making green laurel from a living man,

that loses no leaves in the coldest season.

What a state I was in when I first realized

the transfiguration of my person,

and saw my hair formed of those leaves

that I had hoped might yet crown me,

and my feet with which I stand, move, run,

since each member accords with the spirit,

turned into two roots by the water

not of Peneus, but a nobler river,

and both my arms changed to branches!

The memory still chills me,

of being clothed then in white plumage,

when my hope that had tried to climb too high

was lightning-struck and lying dead,

and I, who had no idea where or when

I might retrieve it, went weeping alone

day and night where I had lost it,

searching the banks and beneath the water:

and while I might my tongue was never silent

from that moment about hope’s evil fall:

until I took on, with its voice, the colour of a swan.

So I went along the pleasant stream,

and wishing to speak I found I always sang,

calling for mercy in a strange voice,

but never making my loving sorrows echo

in so sweet or in so soft a mode

as to make that harsh and savage heart relent.

What was it to feel so? How the memory burns me:

but I need to say more than this

of my sweet and bitter enemy,

more than ever before,

though she is such as is beyond all telling.

She who maddens men with her gaze,

opened my chest, and took my heart in her hand,

saying to me: ‘Speak no word of this.’

Then I saw her alone, in a different dress,

so that I did not know her, oh human senses,

and full of fear told her the truth:

and she turning quickly back

to her usual guise, made me, alas,

semi-living and dumb stone.

She spoke to me, so angered in aspect

that she made me tremble inside the rock,

saying: ‘Perhaps I am not what you believe.’

And I said to myself: ‘If only she releases me

from the rock, no life will make me troubled or sad:

return, my lord, and let me weep.’

I moved my feet then, I don’t know how,

still blaming no-one but my own self,

between living and dying, all that day.

But because the time is short

my pen cannot keep pace with my true will:

I must pass over many more things

inscribed in my mind, and only speak of those

that will seem marvellous to those who hear.

Death circled round about my heart,

which I could not rescue by being silent,

nor could I help my afflicted senses:

a living voice was forbidden me:

so I cried out with paper and ink:

‘I am not my own. If I die the loss is yours.’

I truly thought I could turn myself in her eyes

from worthlessness to a thing of worth,

and that hope had made me eager:

but hope at times is quenched by disdain

at times takes fire: and so I found it then,

placed in the shadows for so long,

for at my prayers my true light had left me.

And not finding a shadow of her, her or there,

nor even the print of her foot,

one day I flung myself down on the grass

like a traveller who sleeps on the way.

Accusing the fugitive ray of light, from there,

I loosed the reins of my sad tears,

and let them fall as they wished,

I felt myself melt wholly, as snow

never vanished so in the sun,

becoming a fount at a beech-tree’s foot.

I held that moist course for a length of time.

Who ever heard of fountains born of men?

Yet I tell you something manifest and known.

The soul whose gentleness is all from God,

since such grace could come from nowhere else,

holds a virtue like that of its maker:

it grants pardon, and never wearies,

to him of humble face and heart,

whatever sins he comes to mercy with.

And if contrary to its nature it suffers

being prayed to often, it mirrors Him,

and so makes the sin more fearful:

for he does not truly repent

who prepares for one sin with another.

So my lady moved by pity

deigned to look down on me, and seeing

I revealed a punishment matched to the sin,

she kindly returned me to my first state.

But there’s nothing a man can trust to in this world:

praying to her still, I felt my bone and nerves

turn to hard flint: and only a voice shaken

from my former being remained,

calling on Death, and calling her by name.

A grieving spirit (I recall) I wandered

through empty and alien caverns,

weeping my errant ardour for many years:

and at least reached its end,

and I returned to my earthly limbs,

I think in order to suffer greater pain.

I followed my desire so closely

that hunting one day as was my custom,

I saw that creature, wild and beautiful,

standing naked

in a pool, when the sun shone most brightly.

I, because no other sight so pleases me,

stood and gazed: she covered in her shame:

and for revenge or to hide herself,

she splashed water in my face, with her hand.

I speak the truth (though I may seem to lie)

that I felt myself altered from my true form,

and swiftly transmuted to a lonely stag,

wandering from wood to wood:

and fleeing from my own pack of hounds.

Song, I was never that golden cloud

that once fell as a precious shower,

so that Jove’s flame was quenched a little:

but I have been the fire that a lovely look kindled,

and the bird that rises highest in the air,

exalting her with my words in honour:

nor could I leave the highest laurel

for some new shape, for by its sweet shade

all lesser beauties that please the heart are scattered.

Notes: Daphne was changed to a laurel on the banks of the Peneus. Petrarch compares it with the Sorgue, Durance, or Rhone. Cycnus was changed into a swan mourning for Phaethon. Battus revealed a secret, to Mercury in disguise, and was turned to flint. Byblis was turned into a fountain, after rejecting her brother’s love. Echo turned into a voice echoing Narcissus. Actaeon saw Diana bathing and was turned into a stag and hunted to death by his hounds. Jupiter raped Danae in a shower of gold, and as an eagle carried off Ganymede. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses for all these references.

‘The Rape of Ganymede’ - Niccolò dell' Abat (Italian, ca. 1509 - 1571), The National Gallery of Art