Petrarch (107 page)

12.
Let her watch:
Cf. 332.64: “she’ll surely recognize my change of style.”

14.
call me:
From the side of light.

draw me:
By making him resemble her.

As in poem 333, this sonnet sends up a sigh of hope that she will intercede for him.

2.
pity’s strong:
It still has the force to win forgiveness.

4.
my faith is to the world:
In the way it reflects her light. Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XXIV, 64–96, regarding the bright coin of faith.

5.
used to fear me:
Doubted his trustworthiness.
knows for certain:
Now that he has been tested.

6–7. I
have always / wanted:
To praise her with honesty.

7.
heard words:
If she read his verse superficially while she lived.

8.
now she can see:
With an inner light.

9.
Heaven will grieve at last:
The angels will pity him.

10.
all my sighs:
His poems.

11.
returns to me:
In his dreams and visions since she died.

12.
these remains are left behind:
At the putting down (“al por giù”) of his body, suggesting a written record. Cf.
332.26.

13.
that host of ours:
The elect souls in the Third Heaven.

14.
Christ and honesty:
One of the rare appearances of Christ’s name in the
Canzoniere.
Cf. 28.90 and 138.8.
Onestate
is virtue in plenitude,
integer vitae,
the full meaning of which he continues to explore.

Since burning desire was spent with her death, the icy fear she has always inspired
in him is all that he feels.

1.
Among a thousand ladies:
One standing out among an elect group.

3.
no false images:
In the beginning, when his verse was free of the by-products of an overheated imagination.
Cf. 329.6.

5.
No signs of earth or mortal cares:
She seemed an angel.

7.
burned and froze for her so often:
Loved her through so many seasons.

8.
spread both its wings:
He opened himself to the full range of feeling.

10.
out of my sight completely:
Cf. 323.67–68: “but all the upper part / of her was shrouded in a mist of dark.”

11.
and stiffen:
Literally, become numb (
torpo
).

12.
lofty windows:
Laura’s eyes.

13.
she, who:
Death.

14.
found entrance:
The eyes are the first organ of the body to die, according to Pliny; see
Historia naturalis
XI, 69: “Cor primum nascentibus formari in utero tradunt, dein cerebrum, sicut tardissime
oculus; sed hos primum mori, cor novissime” (Tassoni).

Considered among the most beautiful of Petrarch’s sonnets, this poem establishes the
exact date of Laura’s death: 6 April 1348, on the same day and hour that he first
saw her in 1327.

1.
She comes to mind:
Cochin suggested that Petrarch composed this sonnet upon rediscovering poem 211 in
the summer of 1369 (Carducci).

2.
Lethe:
The river in which souls are immersed to wash away memory of the deeds and torments
of this life. Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XXVI, 108.

4.
of her own star:
Venus.

6.
so withdrawn:
In high humility collected in itself.

7.
It’s truly she:
The reawakened subject of his thoughts. Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XXX, 73: “Yes, look at me! Yes, I am Beatrice!”

8.
I ask her for the gift:
Cf. 37.86–88: “and those decorous words / rare in the world, unique, / which were
bestowed on me so courteously.”

10.
like one mistaken:
Someone who has misjudged.

11.
have been deceived:
His mind deceives itself.

12.
You do know:
This date also was written into Petrarch’s copy of Virgil’s works (found in the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana), in which he noted the date of their first encounter and the circumstances
of his learning of her death in Parma on 19 May 1348.

He invested everything in the image of his goddess, combining in her all the wealth
of East and West.

The order of the remaining poems in the
Canzoniere
was originally as follows: poems 339–351, 337, 362, 363, 365, 338, 352–361. Petrarch
reordered them in the last year of his life by marking next to each one its new number
in arabic numerals.

1.
in fragrance and in hue:
Virtue and beauty.

3.
fruits, flowers
… :
A harvest that grew out of a seeding in the East.

6.
every ardent virtue:
Possessing the power to ignite virtue. Cf. 146.1.

7.
saw in its shadow:
Where the poet’s eyes seek her form.

8.
my lord:
Love—in keeping with Laura a benign and potent force.

10.
burning, freezing:
Reaching extremes of love and fear.

11.
I was very happy:
Felice,
rather than the more common
lieto,
suggesting “creative.”

12.
Her perfect qualities:
A wholeness more valued now in retrospect. Cf. 263.12–14.

13.
to adorn His Heaven:
As she in her love adorned the shade of the laurel.

14.
took her:
God desired her and won her.

Virtue’s flowering departed the world, leaving him alone to grieve in a wasteland.

1.
You have left, Death:
Cf. 218.9–14.

2.
unarmed and blind:
Without her eyes.

3.
charm naked:
Nobility stripped of her lovely presence.

4.
me here, unconsoled:
Zingarelli compares him to Galahad when the Holy Grail was taken from England.

5.
courtesy exiled:
Her generosity no longer generates generosity.

6.
more have cause to grieve:
The world, which did not recognize her.

7.
the pure seed:
That generates love of virtue, producing new acts of valor.

8.
what will be second:
Who can succeed to perfection? This question is not answered until the final canzone.
Cf. 366.55 ff.

10.
mankind’s lineage:
All those born into this wasteland.

12.
The world did not know her:
Cf. John 1:9, “Mundus eum non cognovit.”

13.
to weep:
To testify.

14.
now made lovely:
So much had her honesty and saintliness informed his verse.

For all the varied ways in which he put form to her loveliness while she lived, a
language for her celestial immortality is beyond him.

1.
opened my eyes:
In the beginning.

2.
diligence:
Study of her person and her ways.

3.
but mortal:
Dying with Laura.

6.
forms:
Summoned in his dreams and visions of her since her death.

7.
no match:
Neither his intellect nor style could reach as far as Heaven to describe her there.

8.
not able to endure:
To be exposed for long periods of time. Cf. 325.99–100.

10.
prayers to God:
Her beauty, withheld from him in life, now humbly intercedes for him in Heaven.

11.
depthless seas:
The
infiniti abissi
can mean, figuratively, either chasms or hells.

12.
beyond one’s wit:
Stilo
(wit) plays on its similarity to
stilla
(drop) in line 11, as if his stony rhymes were just barely forming in the abyss.

14.
the brighter shines its light:
The more blinded he is by its intensity, that is, the more he seeks to seize her
unveiled truth with his mind, the less he understands of it. Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XXX, 25.

As if his efforts in the preceding sonnets should have earned him some response, he
prays for her appearance in his dreams.

1.
cherished pledge:
His faith. Cf. 29.57 and 39.14.

2.
Heaven keeps for me:
Like an investment.

3.
why is pity late:
What is delaying the interest on that investment?

4.
life’s habitual support:
Love of Laura.

5.
Sleep … worthy:
When she came to him in dream.

7.
who delays its coming?:
A less than pious question, perhaps.

9–11.
because of which
… :
These lines draw divine pity down to his own level in an unusual use of enjoinment
of the tercets with the quatrains.

10.
feed upon another’s torment:
Withhold reward, as Laura did.

11.
in his own realm is vanquished:
When mercy is not shown. Cf. Juvenal,
Satires
VI, 209.

12.
You, who can see:
The soul of Laura.

know my pain:
Il mio mal,
a phrase early commentators understood to mean his concupiscence.

14.
with your own shadow:
A specter of her divine form.

Almost despite himself he receives a swift answer to his prayer, so encouraging that
his interest in life is renewed.

2.
to carry through the heavens:
Acting as a go-between, carrying his laments directly to God.

4.
in her own way:
In this case, free of disdain.

5.
wretched heart:
One that’s reduced in circumstance, as in poem 340.

6.
full of humility:
Altered from one who “will feed upon another’s torment” in 340.10.

7.
draw back from death:
From the fires that consume him, but also, pursuing the metaphor of poem 340, to
take back an allotment for his suffering.

10.
or with those words of hers:
He was doubly blessed.

11.
had meaning:
Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XXXIII, 124; and Statius,
Thebais
V, 614.

13.
I was cruel to you:
By restraining him.

14.
things that would stop the sun:
Bring all creation to a halt. This hint of apocalypse marks the beginning of the
end as Petrarch centers his thoughts more and more on Heaven.

Here Laura speaks again with words that heal.

1.
my lord:
Love.

5.
no equal or a second:
Cf. 338.8: “once highest worth is dead, what will be second?” Cf. also Horace,
Odes
1, 12, 18–20.

6.
comes to my sickbed:
Where he languishes from the fevers of life (1. 3).

7.
on such a one:
The image of Laura in this sonnet suggested to some commentators a rendering of the
Beatific Vision, although these words are studiedly noncommittal. Cf. 340.14, where
Laura appeared to him as an
ombra,
an apparition of his imperfect mind.

8.
on the edge:
That is, closer than she has ever been before.

9.
that hand which I so much desired:
Cf. poems 199–201, 208, 302, and 72.56.

10.
she dries my eyes:
Cf. 126.37–39.

12.
knowledge with despair:
Assuming, upon approaching the verge of death, that it is a cause for sorrow and
tears, a conclusion Socrates spoke against in Plato’s
Phaedo.
Cf.
Familiares
VII, 6.

13.
Stop weeping:
Cf. poems 279–280.

14.
as much alive as I’m not dead:
Would he could gain faith in eternal life from her experience of dying.

He lives only because she sustains him in dream.

1.
Heaven now esteems:
Chooses as its lovely adornment.

2.
the tilting of her golden head:
Laura pensive.

5.
still alive:
Cf. 342.14: “Were you as much alive as I’m not dead,” and 341.7–8.

6.
makes one doubt:
Her image retains something of the corporeal, something of the divine; it hovers
in uncertainty.

8.
so quick to help me:
Cf. 341.1.

when dawn comes:
As he is about to reawaken into life. Visions at dawn were often thought to be prophetic—closest
to truth. Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
IX, 16–18.

9.
what sweet welcomings:
A mutual exchange of greetings.

11.
the long history:
Cf. 285.12: “explaining things that happen in our life.”

12.
appears to strike:
Dissolving her shadow.

13.
she knows the ways:
The ways of virtue (Leopardi), or the several paths over which she seeks him where
he is (Zingarelli).

14.
bathed in her tears:
Sorely grieved for him. Cf.
Virgil, Aeneid I,
228; and Dante,
Inferno
II, 116.