The lady by means of whom I had concealed my wishes for so long had to leave the city I mentioned above, and travel to a distant region: because of this, I, greatly troubled by the loss of the beautiful defence I had acquired, was much discomforted, more than I myself would have believed before. And thinking that if I did not write sorrowfully enough about her departure people would more quickly be aware of my pretence, I decided to create a lament as a sonetto: which I will write down, since my lady was the direct cause for certain words that are in the sonetto, as is apparent to anyone who understands it. And so I wrote this sonetto, which begins: ‘O voi che par la via.’
O you who on the way of Love go by,
listen and see
if there is any grief, as grave as mine:
and I beg you only to suffer me to be heard,
and then reflect
whether I am not the tower and the key of every torment.
Amor, indeed not for my slight worth
but through his nobility
placed me in a life so sweet and gentle,
that often I would hear it said behind me:
‘God, for what virtue
does this heart own so much delight?’
Now I have lost all my eloquence
which flowed so from love’s treasure:
and I am grown so poor
in a way that speech barely comes to me.
So that I desire to be like one
who to conceal his poverty through shame,
shows joy outwardly,
and within my heart am troubled and weep.
This sonetto has two main parts: in the first I mean to call on those loyal to Amor in the words that Jeremiah the prophet spoke: ‘O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte si est dolor sicut meus: O all you who pass this way, listen and see, if there is any grief like mine,’ and to beg them to allow me to be heard: in the second part I say where Amor had placed me, with an intention opposite to that which the outer extremes of the sonetto reveal, and I tell what I have lost. The second part begins at: ‘Amor non gia: Amor indeed, not.’ |
