Rime Sparse 1
Sunday, 19 July 2009 07:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammerFrom you who hear in scattered rhymes the sound
of all those sighs with which I fed my heart
throughout the course of my first youthful wound,
back when I was another man in part --
because of the way I, stylish and witty,
wept of my vain sorrows and vain hopes,
from those who understand, knowing love's ropes,
I hope not only pardon, but your pity.
But now, when I think of how for this long time
I have been held by many in esteem,
I often hang my head ashamedly:
shame is the fruit of all my raving rhymes,
and repentance, too, for now I clearly see
that what pleases the world is a brief dream.
I'll be posting these in hopes of stimulating myself into doing more as, to my surprise, digging deeply into Petrarch had a good effect on my own poetry.
---L.
of all those sighs with which I fed my heart
throughout the course of my first youthful wound,
back when I was another man in part --
because of the way I, stylish and witty,
wept of my vain sorrows and vain hopes,
from those who understand, knowing love's ropes,
I hope not only pardon, but your pity.
But now, when I think of how for this long time
I have been held by many in esteem,
I often hang my head ashamedly:
shame is the fruit of all my raving rhymes,
and repentance, too, for now I clearly see
that what pleases the world is a brief dream.
—7 June 2008
The first in a series of translations from Petrarch I did last summer. Well, versifications of Robert Durling's prose ponies, as what Italian I know is Spanish and Latin. By way of which, "love's ropes" and "hang my head" are not in the original: it's just "knowledge of love" and a shame just in thought, without outward sign. But I'm still rather proud of lines 7–8.I'll be posting these in hopes of stimulating myself into doing more as, to my surprise, digging deeply into Petrarch had a good effect on my own poetry.
---L.