30. ‘Giovene donna sotto un verde lauro’ (Sestina form)

colder and whiter than the snow

untouched by the sun for many years:

and her speech, her lovely face, her hair

so please me that she’s before my eyes,

and will be always, wherever, on sea or shore.

My thoughts at last will come to shore,

when there are no green leaves on laurel:

when I’ve quieted my heart, dried my eyes,

we’ll see freezing fire and burning snow:

and there’s not as many strands in my hair

as the years I’d wait to see that, and years.

But since time flies and they vanish, those years,

so that death comes to us, and so sure

either with dark hair or with white hair

I’ll follow the shadow of that sweet laurel,

through the brightest sun and through the snow,

until the last day closes my eyes.

Such lovely eyes were never seen

in our age or in earlier years,

that melt me as sun melts the snow:

from which proceeds a tear-drenched shore

a stream that Love leads under harsh laurel,

that has branches of steel, and golden hair.

I fear I’ll be altered in face and hair

before I see real pity in her eyes,

my idol sculptured from living laurel:

if I’ve not miscounted it’s seven years

today that I’ve sighed from shore to shore,

night and day, in heat and snow.

Fire inside, outside white snow

alone with these thoughts, with altered hair,

I’ll walk weeping along every shore

so that pity perhaps will appear in eyes

not to be born for a thousand years,

if such is the span of cultured laurel.

The laurel, topaz in sun on snow,

is exceeded by blonde hair near the eyes

that bring my years so slowly to shore.

Notes