21. Madrigal
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At death will anyone born arrive
in the flight of time; the sun’s intent leaves not one thing alive. Lacking sweets and those who lament, the ingenuity and the comment –and our antique descent, to the sun but shadows, to wind a smoke. You were such a folk, happy and sad, as you have been; and now we are, as you have seen, earth in the sun, which of life deprives. Every thing at death arrives. Once were our eyes complete with light in every gap; now they are empty, dreadful and black, and this is what time brings with it. |
22. Canzone: text following the begining of a letter to (the unfortunate) Francesco Fattucci, one of M.’s only two canzone.
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What would you make of me? What anew do you wish to begin
with burned wood and an afflicted heart? Love, tell me part, so I might know what state I find me in. The years are at the finish line of my race, like shaft and target, all one part, then, yes, a bit the ardent fire stills its lick and to you, my pardon for past disgrace, by reason that your arms are broke and blunted by the heart, so love to prove itself in me has no more space; and if your thrusts were some new trick on my eyes, on the heart, yielding and shy, will you want what you wished, in times gone by? With scornful self-control, you let yourself be driven away, only as you have less force than once you did, today. You hope, perhaps, for some new loveliness to turn me back to embarrassing danger, where the more sage one is the less one defends: in a longer summer, shorter is the sickness, then I will be like ice in the fire, which is destroyed and disappears and is not ignited. At this age, only death defends from stinging darts and from the fierce arm, by means of doing so much harm, which is excused on no condition, neither place, nor time, nor fortune. This soul of mine, which confers with death and of herself hears what he’ll say, and grieves herself upon suspicions always new, tells the body daily she hopes for her last breath: then she takes the imaginary way of hope confused and fear mixed through. O, love, you are so quick come into view, reckless, audacious, armed and strong! What thoughts to death belong in his time outside of me, to draw leaves and flowers from a dry tree. What could I more? What should I? In your domain, do you not have all my days that ever were, that of my years, no hour belongs to me? What cheat, what force or what brain might turn me back to you, ungrateful sir, who to my heart brings in his mouth death and piety? Full ingrate and thick-headed, would be the soul resuscitated and of no worth, to go back to one who first time gave it death. Earth awaits every birth shortly hour by hour missing every mortal loveliness: Who loves, I see, and then he can not get free. the cruel vengance with great folly– they go together; and that one who is prized less, he is the only one who can run to his wickedness any more. To what do you wish to set me, that the day of final good, which I so need, would be a one of shame and of misdeed? |
23. Sonetto /Sonnet: I have been, lo these many years, a thousand times
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I have been, lo these many years, a thousand times
wounded and slain, not that to be overwhelmed and tired by you would be my fault; and now with white head will I accept your foolish promises this time? You bound how often and released how many times these sad members, and spurred the flank such that I just was able to return it to me, much bathing with many tears this breast of mine! With you I speak, Love, and to you complain, released from your flatteries: what compulsion to take the cruel bow, to pull at devotion? To burned wood, gnawed or sawn or inside furniture, it’s great humiliation, which has lost all skill and shut off every motion. |
24. Beginning of a Sonnet: I make the eyes carry me my poison
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I make the eyes carry me my poison,
since they gave bold darts the passage free; I made a nest and refuge for some of memory’s sweet glances, which will never come again. I made the heart an anvil, the breast a bellows then, to generate the breath, with which you burn me. |
25. Sonetto caudato /Tailed Sonnet: When the servant, by the master with a rasping chain,
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When the servant, by the master with a rasping chain,
is bound in prison without hope of any other fate, he translates by such means his miserable state, for liberty, he would scarcely entertain. And the tiger and the serpent, too, such means restrain, and the fierce lion of thick forests born; and the new artist, by his works so worn, by means of sweat, which follows his great strain. But fire does not unite with such a figure; so that if green wood’s lymph should lose its motion, the old chill gets warmed and then gets nurture, and the age of green so much returns and notions renew and inflame, merry and in youthful vigor, that for the soul and heart, a binding of his breath love fashions. And if he mocks or imagines, he who says in old age it brings shame to love a thing divine–it is a great false claim. The soul that does not dream does not sin to love the things of nature, being used to burden, expiry and measure. |
26. Quatrains of a sonnet
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When it happens that a piece of wood sustains not
its proper humors beyond its place on earth, it can make only heat not great enough, but of small worth, so that it neither dries nor ignites and it burns not. Thus the heart, taken by someone who sweetly renders not, lived in fire, nourished by a tear. Now, since its proper place of lodging is not here, what malice could it be that death offends it not? |
27. Sonnet lacking the second tercet
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Flee love, lovers flee the conflagration;
the burning is harsh and the plague is mortal, so first impulses have no more value, neither force, nor reason, nor to change location. Flee, now you have no small demonstration of a fierce arm and an arrow’s sharpness; read in me, what will be your sickness, what will be your employment and pitless recreation. Flee, and don’t delay, at the first glance: for I thought to have accord at every chance; now I realize, and you see how I blaze. |
28. Madrigal
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Then, because from hour to hour it flatters me,
this memory of eyes and hope by which I’m blessed, not just alive, force and reason seem to constrain me, Love, nature and my antique trope, to gaze at you for all the time I have. To change, if I would have, living in this way, in that other I would die; for this I would find mercy, if it would not have been these. O God, and they are chaste beauties! Who is not alive to this is not yet born and if one follows after us, to say it here between us, he is quickly made to die, once born; so he who does not fall in love with beautiful eyes, does not live. |
29. Fragment
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Every ire, every misery and every force–
who with love is armed, conquers every fortune. |
30. Fragment of a madrigal
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From my darling’s eyes there parts in flight
a burning ray and of light so clear that through mine, closed again, it pierces the heart. Thus Love goes halt, so uneven is the course it steers, banishing my gloom, it gives me light. |