I.

You, who to reach my heart, pass through the eyes
And rouse the mind from sleep's security,
Lo, all my life lies bound in agony.
Love bears it down with overbearing sighs
And slasheth in his going with such might
That all my smothered senses turn to flight.
New is the face that's set in seigniory,
And new the voice that maketh loud my grief.

Love, who hath drawn me down in devious ways,
Might from your noble eyes so swiftly come!
See, he hath hurled his dart, wherefrom my pain
First shot's resultant, and in flanked amaze
See how my afrighted soul recoileth from
That sinister side wherein the heart lies slain.

IV.

If I should pray this lady now that mercy
Should be no foeman of her noble heart,
You'd say that I am base and ignorant
And past all hope and filled with vanity.
Where find you now this novel cruelty,
For still you humble seem, to whom so sees you
Wise, and adorned, alert and subtle even,
And fashioned out in ways of gentleness.

My soul weeps through his sighs for grief and fear
And all those sighs which in the heart are found
Deep drenchen with tear, forth issue sighing,
And then, meseems, there raineth down a clear
Image of a lady thoughtful, bound
Hither to keep death watch o'er that heart's dying.

COMMERCIAL BOND

Sonnet V.

My most rash eyes, yea they who first regarded
That face of yours which is so full of power,
Were those, O Lady, that accused me of you
In that harsh place where Amor holdeth court:
And there before him they adduced the proof
That I was he, who was made your servitor,
Sith sighs and grief had made me prisoner;
Albeit fear already held the heart
And then sans respite did they drag me swiftly
Apart and to a place where I found people
Whereof each one made great lament of love,
Who, when they saw me, cried all, piteously;
"Now art thou servant unto such a one,
"Thou'lt have none other lord save only death."

Sonnet Vll

Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon,
Who makes the whole air tremulous with light,
And leadeth with her Love, so no man hath

Power of speech, but each one sigheth?

Oh God! the thing she's like when her eyes turn,
Let Amor tell! tis past mine utterance:

And so she seems mistress of modesty
That every woman is named "Wrath".

Her charm could never be a thing to tell
For all the noble powers lean toward her.
Beauty displays her for an holy sign. *
Our daring ne'er before did look so high;
But ye! there is not in you so much grace
That we can understand her rightfully.

* E la beltate per sua Dea la mostra
The metaphysics of this line requires a
separate treatise.

Of why they find sweet water in Galicia. (In answer
to a sonnet of Bernardo di Bologna)

Sonnet XVII

Now every cool small spring that springeth sweetly
In Liscian*, takes its clearness and its virtue,

Bernard my friend, from naught else save that maid
Who gives thee answer in thy sharpened rimes;

For in that place where Amor gives report
Of all the beauties he hath looked upon,

He saith that this so gracious one and fair

Hath gathered all strange graces to herself:

And since I bear the grief of this so gravely,

Yea, by that sigh which maketh me its light,

My heart a burning, on the vanquished ship,

I send Pinella, on a river wide,

Filled full of fairies, by attendants served

Who're fair adorned in all noble ways.

*Liscian ? Galicia.

XXV.

Come, come Manetto, look upon this scare-crow
And set your mind to think how this deformed,
Name its degree of coarseness in devise,
Say what it looks like when she slinks away!
Nay were she well concealed within a cloak
And bundled in behind a hood and veil,
And should appear by day accompanied
By any dame of fair nobility,

You could not be so laden with your sins,
So bound in anguish, or by love's abstraction,
Nor so enwrapped in naked melancholy,
But you'd be borne to peril of your death
From laughter, of the sort that splits the sides,
Sooth! You would die or save yourself by running.