318. ‘Al cader d’una pianta che si svelse’

At the fall of a tree that was levelled

like one that steel or storm uproots,

scattering its highest leaves on the ground,

showing its wretched roots to the sun,

I saw another that Love chose for object,

a subject in me for Calliope and Euterpe:

that wound around my heart, as its true home,

as ivy twines around a trunk, or wall.

That living laurel, where my highest thoughts

made their nest, though my burning sighs,

never moved a leaf of those branches,

translated to the sky, has left its roots

in its faithful home, where one still calls

in heavy metres, with no one to reply.

Note: The first tree is Laura, the second her image in his verse. Calliope was the muse of epic, and Euterpe of lyric, poetry: Petrarch implying that his love was both lyrical and epic in the context of his life.

‘The Nine Muses: Calliope’ - Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558 - 1617), The Yale University Art Gallery