72. ‘Gentil mia donna, i’ veggio’
a sweet light that streams from your eyes
that shows me the way that leads to Heaven:
and as it is accustomed to,
in there, where I sit alone with Love,
the heart is shining almost visibly.
This is the sight that leads me to do good,
and drives me towards a glorious end,
only by this distinguished from the crowd:
no human tongue could ever
say what those two divine lights
make me feel,
and when winter scatters frost around,
and when after it the year renews
that is the time of my first troubling.
I think: if there are other works
as fine above, where the eternal Mover
of the stars leaned down from to reveal
his labours to the earth,
open the prison where I am confined,
that shuts from me the road to such life.
Then I turn again to my habitual war,
grateful to Nature and the day I was born
for reserving so much good for me,
and she who exalted my heart
with such hopes: for till then I lay
there, a harmful burden to myself,
but from that day was pleasing to myself,
filling with sweet and noble thought
that heart to which lovely eyes hold the key.
There is no joyous state
that Love or fickle Fortune ever granted
to those they loved most in the world,
that I would not exchange
for those eyes’ glance, from which there comes
my peace, as a whole tree comes from its root.
Wandering sparks of my life,
angelic, blessed, from which delight takes fire,
that consume me and sweetly destroy me:
as every other light
must flee and vanish before your splendour,
so with my heart,
when such great sweetness descends within,
all other things, all thought must go,
and only Love remains there with you.
Whatever sweetness was ever found
in the hearts of venturesome lovers, gathered
all on one place, is nothing to what I feel,
whenever you turn
the black and white of those lovely eyes,
in which Love so delights, sweetly towards me:
and I believe that from my infant cradle
this was the remedy Heaven sent
for my imperfections, and adverse Fortune.
That veil does me wrong
and that hand which so often comes
between those eyes and my great delight,
so that day and night I pour out
my deep passion to ease my heart,
that takes the form of your varying aspect.
Because I see, and am sad,
that my natural gifts help me little
and make me unworthy of a kindly glance,
I make myself such
as befits my exalted hope,
and the noble fire in which I burn.
If, despising what the world desires,
I can make myself by careful study
swift to good and slow to its contrary,
perhaps benign judgement
will one day bring me fame.
Surely the end of my weeping,
my grieving heart does not hope for from elsewhere,
will come at last from that sweet tremor of lovely eyes
the final hope of courteous lovers.
Song, one sister went a little before you,
and I sense another appearing to me
where I live: so I’ll lay out more paper.