SONNETS, ETC.

When I sit down to contemplate my case, And to review the stages of the way, I find from where my steps went first astray, They might have lost me in a darker maze: But when these memories pass, around I gaze, And wonder whence could come a doom so dark; I know I die, and suffer more to mark My care conclude with my concluding race. Yes, die I will, and so my spirit free From her who well will know to' undo and slay me If so she wishes,—such her wish will be, For since my own will does to death betray me, Hers, which is less my friend, must compass too My death—if not, what is it she will do?

At length into thy hands I come—to die; For sure I am that ev'n the poor relief Of lightening with laments my weight of grief, Is a desire thy rigour will deny. How my life has so long been borne, or why So guardedly sustained, I cannot tell, Unless for proof how willingly and well The sword will act that cuts so firm a tie. My tears have fallen where barrenness and drought Small fruit have yielded, let what I have wept For thee suffice—their wasted springs have kept Pace with my pining; but if still you crave Tears, cruel Lady, be they henceforth sought Where the yew weeps o'er Garcilasso's grave!

Awhile my hopes will tower aloft in air On cheerful wings, till, weary with their flight, They fall relaxed from their Icarian height, And leave me on the surges of despair. This change from bliss to ruin who could bear? Oh wearied heart! in this thy dark estate Of wretchedness be vigorous and elate,— Calms follow storms, and frowning ends in fair. By force of arm myself will undertake, Though fraught with danger and alarming ill, To break a barrier none beside would break; Death—durance—nought shall countervail my will, To come to thee, my Beauty, saved or lost, Or as a living form, or naked ghost!

Lady, thy face is written in my soul, And whensoe'er I wish to chant thy praise, On that illumined manuscript I gaze, Thou the sweet scribe art, I but read the scroll. In this dear study all my days shall roll; And though this book can ne'er the half receive Of what in thee is charming, I believe In that I see not, and thus see the whole With faith's clear eye; I but received my breath To love thee, my ill Genius shaped the rest; 'Tis now that soul's mechanic act to love thee, I love thee, owe thee more than I confessed; I gained life by thee, cruel though I prove thee; In thee I live, through thee I bleed to death.

By rugged ways I reach towards a bourn Which awes me not, and if I strive to slack My usual pace, or for a change draw back, There am I dragged with cruel unconcern; But still, with death at hand, for life I yearn, And seek fresh means my footsteps to reverse; I know the better, I approve the worse, Either from evil custom, or the stern Fatality of woe. Yet, my brief time— The wandering process of my wayward years Alike in manhood as in early prime,— My will (with which I war not now) in fact, Sure Death, whose peaceful slumber dries all tears, Make me not care the harm to counteract.

He who has lost so much, stern Deity, Can lose no more! oh Love, let what has past Suffice thee—let it profit me at last Ne'er to have shrunk from thy supreme decree. On the white walls of thy pure sanctuary My pictured tablets and dank robes I hung, Ev'n as a shipwrecked solitary, flung Safely ashore from thy tempestuous sea. Then vowed I never more to trust the bliss, At my command and option, to the guile Of such another syren, but from this How shall vows save me? in the risk I run I break no vow, for neither is her smile Like others' smiles, nor in my power to shun.

From that illumined face, pure, mild, and sweet, A living spirit in keen lightning flies; And by perception of my eager eyes, I feel it stays not till their orbs repeat Its ardour; blandly on the track they meet, Which my charmed spirit, winged with warmth, pursues, Undone, and clamouring for the good it views: When absent, Memory in her holy heat Paints its passed beauty, till my soul will glow, Thinking it real, and divinely stirred, On tiptoe fly to its embrace, but meeting Nought but repulse from its angelic foe, Whose aspect guards the gate, it dies with beating Its heart against it, like a captive bird.

If I live on, dear Lady, in the void Caused by your absences, I seem to' offend Him who adores you, and to discommend The bliss that in your presence I enjoyed. Soon by another thought am I annoyed— If I of life despair, I forfeit too The good I hope for in beholding you; By ills so varying is my peace destroyed. My feelings in this variance all take part So fiercely, that I know not what decreed Me to such grievances—I never look On their dissensions without swift rebuke, But night and day they war with nicest art. And in my ruin are alone agreed.

Oh lovely gifts, by me too fatal found! Lovely and dear indeed whilst Heaven was kind; In mine immortal memory ye are joined, And sworn with her to give my dying wound; Who would have said, sweet seasons past, when crowned With the ecstatic hope your emblems lent, That one day you would have to represent Despair so dark, affliction so profound? Since in an hour ye made unpitying theft Of those Elysian dreams, do not deny To take as well the sorrow you have left; Else, can I but suspect ye raised so high My youthful joys, to wish that I should die Midst mournful memories of the bliss bereft!

In order to restrain this mad desire, Impossible and rash, and thus to miss The fall from danger's crag, ah, if for this My proud thoughts, blind with what they most admire, Still fail to see what safety would require, Me as I am, too timid or too bold, In such confusion that I dare not hold The reins of that which sets my soul on fire; What can it serve to see the pictured tale Of him who, falling with scorched wings, gave name And celebration to the Icarian seas; Or that where (poplars now) seven maids bewail Their Phaëton's past frenzy, and the flame Whose rage the' Italian waves could scarce appease?

Strange icy throes the arms of Daphne bind, Which shoot, and spread, and lengthen into boughs; And into green leaves metamorphosed shows The head whose locks, wooed by the summer wind, Made the fine gold seem dim; the rigorous rind Clothes the soft members that still pant; her feet, Snowy as swift, in earth fast rooted meet, By thousand tortuous fibres intertwined. The author of an injury so great, With virtue of his tears this laurel fed, Which flourished thus, perpetual greenness keeping; Oh fatal growth! oh miserable estate! That from his weeping each fresh day should spread The very cause and reason of his weeping.

As a fond mother, whose sick infant lies Weeping, importunate for what she knows If giv'n will double all his pangs and woes, In tenderest mercy his desire denies; Till, moved to pity by his streaming eyes, She can withstand no longer, but in haste Submits the flavourous mischief to his taste, And seals his ruin, though she stills his cries; So to my sick and frenzied thoughts that yearn And plead to me for thee, I would deny The fatal fruit with merciful concern; But night and day they murmur, weep, and pine, Till I, alas, consent to soothe their cry, Forgetful of their death, and ev'n of mine!

If lamentations and complaints could rein The course of rivers as they rolled along, And move on desert hills, attired in song, The savage forests, if they could constrain Fierce tigers and chill rocks to entertain The sound, and with less urgency than mine, Lead tyrant Pluto and stern Proserpine, Sad and subdued with magic of their strain; Why will not my vexatious being, spent In misery and in tears, to softness soothe A bosom steeled against me? with more ruth An ear of rapt attention should be lent The voice of him that mourns himself for lost, Than that which sorrowed for a forfeit ghost!

Neither the odious weapons of the Gaul, In anger brandished at my breast, nor sleet Of poisonous arrows, than the winds more fleet, Shot by the warders of the mounted wall, Nor skirmish, nor the roaring thunderball— The dreadful counterpart of those above, Forged by Vulcanian artifice, when Jove In wrath would the rebellious world appal— Could for a single moment haste my death, Though much I braved the risks of cruel war; But 'twas the fatal air bereaved my breath, In one short day, and to thine urnless hand, Parthenope, consigned my ashes—far, Alas! so far from my dear native land!

Fate! in my griefs sole agent, how have I Felt thy harsh rule! my vine, with hurtful hand, Thou hast cut down, and scattered on the sand Both flower and fruit; in little compass lie My loves—the joys of summers far-flown by— And every happier expectation turned To scornful ashes, which, though scarce inurned, Hear not the wrath and clamour of my cry. The tears which thou to-day hast seen me shower On this lone sepulchre, receive, receive! Though there they may be fruitless, till the hour When the brown shadows of an endless eve Shall shroud these eyes, which saw on earth thy power, Leaving me others which thou canst not grieve.

Thinking the path I journeyed led me right, I have fallen on such mishap, that not the pleas Of fancy, nor the wildest images Can for an instant minister delight. The green field seems a desert,—starry night Obscure—the sprightliest conversation dead— Sweet music harsh, and my most favourite bed Of odorous violets, the hard field of fight. Of sleep—(if sleep I have) that part alone Visits my weary soul, which surely is The frightful synonym of death, and last, I deem, whate'er may be my spirit's tone,— Ere half run out its sands of weariness, Each passing hour still heavier than the past.

If I am wax to thy sweet will, and hence Sun myself only in thy sight, (and he Who views thy radiance uninflamed, must be Void of all feeling) whence, Señora, whence Rises a circumstance, whose strange offence Against the laws of reason, had it been Less seldom proved on me—less seldom seen, Had led me to mistrust my very sense— Whence comes it, that far-off I am inflamed And kindled by thy aspect, even until My melting heart its fervour scarce sustains, Whilst if encountered near by thine untamed, Untameably bright eye, an instant chill Makes the blood curdle in my crimson veins?

Julio! when weeping I have left the friend That never leaves my thought, the better part Of my cleft soul, that like another heart Did life and strength to my existence lend, After my sum of bliss I seem to send An eye of strict inquiry, and so fast Find it consuming, that I fear at last Peace must depart, and ev'n existence end. And in this fear my tongue strives to converse With thee, dear friend, of that remembered day, When I began, sad wanderer to thy shrine Of beauty, from my own far, far away, News of thy soul to send in plaintive verse, And learn from thee intelligence of mine.

So strongly are the cruel winds combined My ruin to concert, that they disperse My tender fancies soon as framed, and worse, Leave all my keen anxieties behind, That like tenacious ivies darkly twined Round some old ruin, fix their vigorous root Deep in my heart, and their wild branches shoot O'er all the fond affections of my mind. Yet on the other hand I murmur not, Now that the winds in their tempestuous strife Have stolen my bliss, that thus my sorrows stay; I rather gather comfort from the thought; For in the process of so hard a life, They lessen the long toil and weary way.

Illustrious Marquis, on whom Heaven showers down All the bliss this world knows! if to the light Of thy resplendent valour—to the height Whereto the voice of thy sublime renown Calls me, I climb, as to the flaming crown Of some stupendous mountain, thou shalt be Eternal, peerless, sole, and I through thee Scornful of winged Time's destructive frown. All that we wish from heaven, and gain on earth, Are in thy high perfections met; in short, Thou art the unique wonder, at whose birth Her world of bright conceptions Nature scanned, Singled the best, and with Dædalian hand, Thrice livelier than her cast the statue wrought.

With keen desire to see what the fine swell Of thy white bosom in its core keeps shrined, If the interior graces of the mind Its outward shape and loveliness excel, I have my sight fixed on it; but the spell Of its voluptuous beauty holds mine eyes In such enchantment, that their curious spies Pass not to mark the spirit in its cell, And thus stay weeping at the portal, made To grieve me by that hiding hand which even Holds its own bosom's beauty unforgiven; So I behold my hope to death betrayed, And love's sharp lances, rarely known to fail, Serve not to pierce beyond its muslin mail.

As, love, the lily and purpureal rose Show their sweet colours on thy chaste warm cheek, Thy radiant looks, angelically meek, Serene the tempest to divine repose, And as thy hair, which for its birthright chose The opal's dye, upon the whitest neck Waved by the winds of heaven without a check, In exquisite disorder falls and flows; Gather the rich fruit of thy mirthful spring, Ere angry Time around thy temples shed The snows of hasting age; his icy wing Will wither the fresh rose, however red; And changing not his custom, quickly change The glory of all objects in his range.

Prostrate on earth the lofty column lies, That late sustained my life; oh how much joy, How many hopes did one dark day destroy! And on the wind each blest idea flies. How sure to fail is Fancy, when she tries To build aught durable for me! fresh woes Come with the force of persecuting foes, And like abandoned things my hopes chastise: Oft times I yield, yet oft my tyrants face, With a new fury that might break in twain A mountain placed to bar my way—impell'd By the desire some day to turn again— Turn to behold her loveliness and grace, Whom it were better ne'er to have beheld.

Love! I have dressed myself in robes of white, Shaped by thy scissors; as I put them on, I find them loose and easy, but anon They grow uneasy, cumbersome, and tight. After consenting with a child's delight To wear them, such repentance has possessed My soul, that oft, by pure impatience pressed, I try to tear them off in thy despite. But who can free himself from such a suit, When his thwart nature has become thereto Conformed? if of my reason any part Remains unparalyzed, it has not heart To abet my cause, for in this stern dispute Of circumstance, it knows it would not do.

Boscán, you are now revenged upon my play Of past severe unkindness, who reproved The tenderness of that soft heart which loved With such excessive warmth; now, not a day Passes, but for the things I used to say With so much rudeness, I myself chastise; Still, times there are when I at heart despise, And blush for the abasement I betray. Know that, full grown, and armed against desire, With my eyes open I have vailed my plume To the blind boy you know,—but soft, my lute, Never, oh never did man's heart consume In so divine and beautiful a fire; If you her name solicit, I am mute.

Wild doubts, that floating in my brain delight To war with my fond feelings, tempesting In your suspicious flight with angry wing My melancholy bosom, day and night! Now is my force of mind extinguished quite, And all resistance, vain is my lamenting,— Vanquished, I yield myself at length, repenting,— E'er to have striven in such a hopeless fight. Bear me to that lone tower whose gate alarms The quick,—my death I saw not graven there, Blindness has sealed my eyes till now; my arms I cast aside; since their misfortunes bar Help from the unhappy—the proud pomp prepare, And hang my spoils on your triumphal car!

Within my spirit was conceived in train Of amiable esteem a love most sweet, Whose birth, with all the joy with which men greet Their first-born's birth, long wished for, but in vain, I hailed,—but soon from it was born a bane Which has entirely conquered that fond flight Of feeling, and transformed my first delight Into sharp rigour and tormenting pain. O cruel grandson, that to thy meek sire Giv'st life, yet strik'st thy mournful grandsire dead, Why so unlike thy parent! what black scowl Wear'st thou, stern Jealousy, beneath thy cowl, When ev'n thine own fierce mother, Envy dire, Shrieks to behold the monster which she bred!

I am for ever bathed in tears, I rend The air with sighs, and suffer more from dread To tell thee 'tis through thee I have been led To such a state that, seeing where I tend, And the long distance I have come, sweet friend, In following thee, if I desire to leave The vain pursuit, my heart sinks to perceive The way behind me lengthening without end. And if I wish to reach the onward height, Sad thoughts of those who in the wilderness Have fallen, at every step awake my fear; Now above all things then I need the light Of hope, by which I have been wont to steer Through the dim tract of thy forgetfulness.

Past now the countries of the Midland Main, Wretched—I lose the bliss of former times, Borne farther every day from Christian climes, Realms, customs, tongues, and from my native Spain. And now despairing to return again, I muse on remedies of fancied power; The most assured one is the fatal hour That will conclude at once my life and pain. I should be charmed from whate'er ills close o'er me, With seeing you, Lady, or might hope to be, If I could hope without the certainty Of losing what I hope; but not seeing you, Save death, I see no remedy before me, And if death be one, it will fail me too.

Boscán! the sword, the shout, and trumpet shrill Of Mars, who, watering with his own red blood The Lybian soil in this tremendous feud, Makes our green Roman laurel flourish still,— Have to my memory brought the ancient skill, And old Italian valour, by whose force All Africa was shook, from the coy source Of Nile's young fountain to far Atlas' hill. Here, where the steady Roman's conquering brand And fiery torch tipt with licentious flame, Have left poor Carthage nothing but a name, Love with his whirling thoughts on every hand Wounds and inflames me in his fearful sway, And I in tears and ashes waste away.

I thank thee, Heaven, that I have snapt in twain The heavy yoke that on my neck I wore, And that at length I can behold from shore, Void of all fear, the black tempestuous main; Can see, suspended by a slender chain, The life of lovers who enchanted rest In error, slumbering upon Beauty's breast, To warning deaf, and blinded to their bane. So shall I smile when mortals are undone, Nor yet be found so cruel to my kind As may appear,—I shall but smile as one To health restored, whom sickness long confined, Not to see others suffering, but to see Myself from similar afflictions free.

My friend, ungrateful Love, who well must know With what pure constancy my faith I keep, Exerting his base pride, which is to heap Upon his dearest friend his heaviest woe,— Fearing that if I write, and publish so His deeds, his grandeur I abate, his force Not equalling his spite, has had recourse To the fierce intervention of my foe; And in the noble part with which I wield The sword, and that which gives intelligence Of our conceptions, I have wounded been; But I will take good care that the offence Shall cost the offender dear, now I am healed, Offended, free, and for repayment keen.

My tongue goes as grief guides it, and I stray Already in my grief without a guide; We both must go, howe'er dissatisfied, With hasty step in an unwished-for way. I, but companioned by the dark array Of images that frenzy does create, And that, as forced along by grief to state A thousand things it never wished to say. The law to me is most severe—it knows My innocence, yet makes not mine alone, But others' faults, my torturers! why should I Smart for the madness of my tongue, when woes Beyond endurance lift the lash on high, And Reason trembles on her tottering throne?

Entering a valley in a sandy waste Which none was journeying save myself alone, A dog I noticed, which with piteous tone In disconcerted grief the wild sands paced; Now to the sky it howled, its way now traced Snuffing the dew, now ran, now turned, now stayed, And its concern by every mark betrayed Of desolate delay or restless haste. It was that it had missed its lord that morn, And felt the separation; mark the pain Of absence! Much did its distraction move My pity, and 'have patience, poor forlorn,' I cried—'I, thy superior, from my love Am absent too, yet my regret restrain.'

Loud blew the winds in anger and disdain, And raged the waves, when to his Sestian maid, Leander, ardent of her charms, essayed For the last time to swim the stormy main. Conquered with toil, o'erwearied, and in pain, More for the bliss which he should lose by death, Than sorrowful to breathe out his sweet breath On the vext surge he buffeted in vain,— Feebly, 'twas all he could, the dying boy Called to the waves, (but never word of woe Was heard by them) "if me you must destroy, This melancholy night, look not so stern; Vent as you will your rage on my return, But spare, kind waters, spare me as I go!"

Lady, whose name to high Cardona brings Fresh praise, whose talents and fair deeds require Immortal accents from Minturno's lyre, Tansillo's harp, and polished Tasso's strings; If force, if fire, if spirit whilst he sings, Fail not at need thy Lasso's Spanish lute, Through thee I shall arrive, with daring foot, At Helicon's steep crown and sky-born springs, By dulcet sounds that might the waves command, Accomplishing with ease the ambitious aim: By ways a wilderness till now, the land Of storied valour, of romantic fame, And Tagus, rolling o'er a golden sand, Pay happy tribute to thy noble name.

Fair Naiads of the river, that reside Happy in grottos of rock crystal veined With shining gems, and loftily sustained On columns of pure glass! if now ye glide On duteous errands, or weave side by side Webs of fine net-work, or in groups remove To hear and tell romantic tales of love, Of Genii, Fays, and Tritons of the tide,— Awhile remit your labours, and upraise Your rosy heads to look on me—not long Will it detain you. Sweet'ners of my song! For pity hear me, watering as I go With tears your borders, and for such short space, In heavenly notes sing solace to my woe!

To love thee, after what thy vow, Slighting my truth, has made thee now, Must be a crime, but one, false fair, Which thou wilt have to expiate, where None will know thee for having known So ill the heart thou leavest lone.

Loving so passionately thy free Seducing smile, I thought to be Lost, but not guilty; but, alas, By all I am, by all I was, 'Tis proved too surely, to my cost, I guilty am, as well as lost!

Oh that I loved not with the zeal Thou'rt but too well assured I feel! That I exultingly might say, 'Tis joy to think that thou wilt pay, In unknown modes of future woe, For what none save ourselves shall know.

I will now cease, nor ruffle more Thy beauteous cheek with speech so free; My silent dying shall restore Its peace, and mutely speak for me.

I have already deeply erred In saying what were best unsaid, Thy gentle heart I have but stirred, Not staunched a single wound that bled.

Henceforth I heave no fruitless sighs, No tears but unseen tears I shed; The injured heart that silent dies, Has that which speaks in Injury's stead!

Perhaps the youth who seemed so cold In leaving thee so soon, to seek Scenes where he will no more behold Thy lustrous eye and smiling cheek, Yet loved thee much,—the hope to meet Once more, makes ev'n departure sweet.

It is not possible that one Like him considerate—Love forbid! Thinking he knew thee, could have known, Enchanted mortal, what he did, When he empowered thee thus to weave His joy and grief the self-same eve.

He took perhaps the readiest way He could have done thy worth to know; From thy fine face and finer play Of wit he could not, could not go, And seeing thee but once, remain Content to see thee ne'er again.

Lady! from this net and coil We must gather, that you cast From you, in an hour, the toil Of the four and twenty past.

If at passers-by you send The fair work your fingers do, How think you to discommend That which others weave for you!

Since I have lost my bridal name, Sichæan Dido, when the gloom Of death has quenched my vital flame, Be this the legend on my tomb:

"The worst of Trojans gave, alas, The cruel cause—the sword unjust; Poor Dido, brought to life's last pass, Could furnish nothing but the thrust!"

"Why, what calumnious charge is this That you against him would advance? All that the good knight did amiss Was, that he ever joined the dance." Count they then this a great offence? I do not think it such; his sin Is quite excused by the defence That 'twas the woman drew him in. She, she it was that caused his fall More, much more than the having set His mind upon surpassing all In the fantastic pirouette.[12]

Whilst thou, Fernando, strikest from thy strings The illustrious deeds of heroes and of kings, Whilst men, whilst Gods stand spellbound at thy strain Of barbarous nations tamed by sceptred Spain,— From Pindus' sacred crown and tuneful falls, Thee with sweet words Calliope thus calls: "Hail, youth, whose temples, late alone entwined By Mars' red hand, now bays Phœbean bind! This grants Apollo, this the God of wine, The lightfoot Nymphs, and whole harmonious Nine, That with the kings that to thy lyric fire Owe half their fame, thyself that smit'st the lyre, Shall unborn nations join—admire, and praise, And no dark night succeed thine endless days."[13]