Provisional Sonnets

Francesco Petrarca

(1304 – 1375)

Lonely and pensive, I am a traveller

Through empty fields, with heavy, slowing steps.

I do not want to meet, or face the stare

Of other humans in my bleak landscapes.

This is the Petrarch sonnet Landor chose

From all the catalogue to elevate

And praise extravagantly to the skies,

And which of course defies translators’ art.

And yet the sestet is so beautiful

It urges some attempt at compromise. So:

The woods and streams must know my heart’s distress

Yet everywhere I walk Love comes as well,

Reasoning with me and offering, as we go,

To listen when I voice my unhappiness.

Bernadeno Rota

(1508 – 1575)

Smiling and radiant in a scarlet robe,

My dear, lost wife again appeared to me

In sleep. Remembered, her face a sentient orb

Which shone below a spreading laurel tree.

Thus Bernadeno Rota, in the scree

Of poems for his wife of sixteen years

For sixteen years after her death – till he

Died also, his sorrowful pen wet with tears.

I knelt before her. Graciously she spoke,

Instructing me in how to live exiled

From her. I listened in suspended pain;

She spoke of heavenly things. I learned, then woke,

And keep them still, remembering how she smiled

And scattered roses as she left again.

Folgore da San Gimignano

(1250? – 1315?)

For June I send to you a mountain glade

With groves of trees and thirty villages,

Where rivulets divide their gardens’ shade

And towers take the city landscape’s ease –

It is thought this ideal town must be in fact

The town memorialized in the poet’s name

With prospects over Tuscan stream and tract

To pastoral testaments to Boccaccio’s fame.

And in that easement oranges and limes

And citrons, lemons, dates and savoury fruits

Make arches over long espaliered ways;

So, in this town I send you, may the times

All be propitious, and people at its gates

Be amorous in the extreme and sing your praise.

Interlude

A Quest

Something quite different, an interlude,

A pause to contemplate the line and find

One line supremely beautiful – and know why.

Contenders everywhere proliferate.

‘Tis midnight. But small thoughts have I of sleep:

Fraught Coleridge in tentative excellence.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow:

Perhaps too technical to seize the crown?

The stars look very cold about the sky:

Keats’ genius manifest at twenty-one.

But what of this conceit as playful trope,

And might this be the acme of them all?

The line of lines eclipsing every one –

Keep up your bright swords for the dew will rust them.

Folgore da San Gimignano

(1250? – 1315?)

I give you for the New Year’s winter snows

A room with fires of sticks and bundled grass

And beds in bedrooms decked with sumptuous furs,

The beds heaped high with patterned silks and lace.

The poet lives exulting in his powers

In ancient San Gimignano, which in turn

Exulted in its twelve formidable towers.

The city taught him all he sought to learn.

By the fire are sparkling wine and an array

Of cakes and sweets, cloaks made of wool from Douai

Against sirocco, tramontane and gales;

And may you go out in the shining day

To throw in handfuls balls of glittering snow

At girls surrounding you in ermine shawls.

Givanni Della Casa

(1503 – 1556)

Spangled white the frozen dark world stands

With oak trees shaking snow from outstretched arms.

My downcast thoughts embrace the trees as friends

While crimson flowers hide in ice their charms.

Casa nearing death spends his last year

Amongst Morillo oaks. He walks and trails

His fifty sonnets behind him in the snow

While Melancholy must contend with gales.

Although time’s darkness threatens everything

I note that winter does not ever lead

To darker winters but to luminous spring;

And so I feel inclined once more to sing –

When winter seems persuaded to recede –

Though sheltering under Melancholy’s wing.

Folgore da San Gimignano

(1250? – 1315?)

For May I give you horses everywhere,

Horses trumpeting and beautiful,

Robust yet trained, with festive riders there,

Splendid with silk and flag and clamorous bell

Little more is known about the poet

Than has already been disclosed elsewhere;

Perhaps climbing one tower and looking out

He began his twelve sonnets on the twelfth stair.

-- Each horseman trailing roses in long sprays

Yet shattering jousting spears on shield and lance,

While violet garlands rain from balconies,

And oranges are thrown through perfumed airs.

These horses are for you. They rear and prance

While lovers kiss and cast off winter cares.