Читать книгу A history of Italian literature онлайн

40 страница из 109

So goodly and so seemly doth appear My Lady, when she doth a greeting bring, That tongue is stayed, silent and quivering, And eye adventures not to look on her. She thence departeth, of her laud aware, Meek in humility’s apparelling; And men esteem her as a heavenly thing Sent down to earth a marvel to declare. Whoso regardeth, so delightedly Beholds, his eyes into his heart instil Sweet only to be known by tasting it; And from her face invisibly doth flit A gentle spirit Love doth wholly fill, That to the soul is ever saying, Sigh.

The length of Italian canzoni renders it extremely difficult to do them justice in a work of necessarily contracted limits. Two stanzas, however, of Dante’s canzone on the death of his lady are, as it were, a little poem complete in themselves, and may be cited in Rossetti’s matchless version:

I was a-thinking how life fails with us Suddenly after such a little while; When Love sobbed in my heart, which is his home. Whereby my spirit waxed so dolorous That in myself I said, with sick recoil: 'Yea, to my Lady too this Death must come.’ And therewithal such a bewilderment Possessed me, that I shut mine eyes for peace; And in my brain did cease Order of thought, and every healthful thing. Afterwards, wandering Amid a swarm of doubts that came and went, Some certain women’s faces hurried by, And shrieked to me, 'Thou too shalt die, shalt die!'