70. ‘Lasso me, ch’i’ no so in qual parte pieghi’

Ah me, I don’t know where to seek for hope

that has been false so many times before:

if there is no one who will listen with pity,

why should I send the same prayers to heaven?

But if it should chance that I’m not prevented

from ending these sad songs

before my ending,

let it not weigh heavy with my lord if I

ask to sing freely among the grass and flowers:

‘Drez et rayson es qu’ieu ciant e ’m demori,

It’s right and just I should sing and be happy’.

For it is right that I should sing sometimes,

since I have sighed so very long

that it’s never soon enough to begin

to counter so much grief with smiles.

And if I could only grant those sacred eyes

some delight

through sweet speech of mine

Oh I’d be blessed beyond all other lovers!

More so if I could say without a lie:

‘Donna mi priegha, per ch’io volgio dire,

My lady asks me, so I desire to speak.’

Wandering thoughts, that step by step

have led me to such high poetry,

see how my lady’s heart is cold enamel,

so hardened that I cannot pass inside.

She does not deign to gaze so low

as to care for our words

against heaven’s wishes,

so that I’m already tired of the struggle:

and as my heart becomes hard and rough,

‘così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro,

so I would wish my speech to be rougher.’

What do I say? Where am I? Do I deceive myself

because my exalted passion runs so high?

Though I traverse the sky from sphere to sphere

there is no planet that forces me to grieve.

If a mortal veil dims my sight

what fault is it of the stars,

or anything of beauty?

With me is what harms me day and night,

what brings me pain from its pleasure,

‘la dolce vista e ’l bel guardo soave,

the sweet sight and the lovely gentle look.’

Everything with which the world’s adorned

issued pure from the eternal Maker’s hand:

but I who cannot discern how to enter in,

am dazzled by beauty shown me all around:

and whenever I turn to the real splendour,

my eyesight cannot see true,

as if it has been weakened,

through its own fault, not by the day

when I first turned towards that beauty

‘nel dolce tempo de la prima etade,

in the sweet season of my early youth.’

Notes: The last lines of the verses are quotations in chronological order from the poetic tradition leading to Petrarch, namely from a poem attributed to Arnaut Daniel, from Guido Cavalcanti, from Dante, Cino da Pistoia, and from Petrarch 23.

‘Dante (Study for Dante’s Dream)’ - Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828 - 1882)