Sonnets, Songs, and Triumphs

...and diligence. To the laborious and high hill of reason and of virtue: because the reason of Plato and similarly of Aristotle is placed in the middle ventricle of our brain In medieval and Renaissance anatomy, the brain was divided into "ventricles" or cells; the middle one was often associated with the "cogitative" or reasoning faculty.: so also virtue, whose form is this same reason, is placed in a difficult and high place: shining and flashing like the sun: which we see observed by the most noble poet Dante Alighieri in his first canto of the Inferno, saying:

But after I had reached the foot of a hill
There where that valley ended
Which had pierced my heart with fear

I looked on high and saw its shoulders

Clad already in the rays of the planet

original: "pianeta" (the sun, considered a planet in the Ptolemaic system)

Which leads men straight on every path.

¶ And thus it is also clearly manifest how easily one is led to sin: but to return to virtue after the habit of vicious appetite is formed, no one can do so without great difficulty: regarding which sentiment not only the philosophers speak, but also the poet Virgil demonstrates in the sixth book of the Aeneid original: "sexto de la Eneida" when he says:

Easy is the descent to hell
For the dark gate is always open.
But to retrace one's steps and to the upper

Light return into the open air

Here is the laborious task: which few

Could do by the harsh and certain path.

¶ And it follows, To withdraw I say. FROM the torment original: "stratio": because I love and am not loved. FROM which today my virtue: that is, the reason for whose excellence we surpass the brute animals. It would wish to help me: it offers me help against the intolerable torment of love: but it cannot because I am so habituated: that my will is no longer free.

Anto.

TO TAKE a graceful revenge of his A commentary on Sonnet III: Messer Francesco Messer Francesco Petrarch describes how Love acted to strike him, to take revenge for the many times he had struck in vain before: and how for him there was no remedy to protect himself from that love. TO make [his power] known in that heart where virtue was restricted. IN THE eyes: so as not to look. Hence Propertius: If you do not know, the eyes are the leaders in love. original: "Si nescis oculi sunt in amore duces"

Fran. E

THE fact that infinite: the fourth sonnet original: "qrto sonetto" demonstrates that in love one should not consider so much the excellence of the place where the beloved thing was born, as much as the proper excellence and beauty of that thing: saying: that God, than whom no other created thing is either better or more excellent, showing His infinite providence together with art in the composition of the whole world and in His nature of the planets: when [He came] to earth to reveal the Old Testament: whose scripture and mysteries had already for many years been hidden regarding the true understanding, He did not seek for His disciples and companions neither Kings nor lords nor gentlemen: but suitable and good people like Saint John & Saint Peter: whom, although they were fishermen, He took to Himself and finally made them partakers of the celestial kingdom. And also He himself did not care nor wish to be born in the Roman Empire: but in Judea which was, according to the opinion of the gentiles, a depressed and vile nation: and this only because by exalting low and despised things He more clearly demonstrated His divine greatness. Whence, adapting the similarity, he says almost in the same way was born a woman most beautiful like the sun: that is, the beloved Madonna Laura in the small village original: "borgetto," likely referring to Caumont of which we spoke in the prologue: and this woman is such that because of her marvelous excellence even Nature thanks that place: that is, that village: whence so beautiful a lady is in the world. There are some who say that Petrarch made this response to the ambassadors of Paris: who, being in Avignon, reproached him that he should be so fiercely [in love] with one of such low condition...

SONNET IV.