Sonnets, Songs, and Triumphs

O father, if you are a god of the river,
Help me: you, goddess of the nourishing earth,
Either receive me into your pious bosom,
Or change the beautiful form that causes this war
So much that, for the pleasure of others,
I turn into something else: so that he who seizes me
Cannot have his pleasures from me.

¶ This prayer was hardly finished when suddenly Daphne was miraculously transformed into a Laurel The Italian Lauro refers to both the laurel tree and Petrarch's beloved, Laura. First, her joints and limbs began to take on a wooden stiffness; her chest original: precordij was encircled by a thin bark; her hair changed into leaves; her arms grew into branches. Her feet, which just a moment before were so swift, were changed into roots fixed in the earth. Her face became the top of the tree; only her liveliness and greenness remained. Then Apollo, who still loved her, placed his hand on the trunk; feeling her heart still moving under the new bark, he embraced the branches as if they were limbs. Kissing the tree, he drew back as it bent away from him. Seeing this, after many sighs, Apollo spoke thus:

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¶ It seemed as though the new Laurel heard these words, for it appeared to accept them with a movement of its top. Here, our noble and learned poet Petrarch continuously and secretly demonstrates the virtue of his beloved lady by comparing her to the virgin Daphne, fragrant and always green with glory like the Laurel.

Anto.

WHEN I move my sighs. Through this, Master Francesco Petrarch demonstrates the name of his lady. He takes the beginning of each of these words: namely, lau-da-do praising; he takes lau-re-ale laurel/royal state; he takes re and makes Laure; then where he says tacita silent he takes ta and makes Laureta. And so his lady was named, though for greater excellence and a more beautiful name—and also because it suited his purpose and allowed for better sonority in his verses—he called her Laura. He speaks to her in this sonnet, unless perhaps Apollo is indignant. Speaking poetically, Apollo fell in love with Daphne, who changed into a laurel; that laurel has always been dedicated to Phoebus (for Phoebus and Apollo are the same). And from that Laurel, because Apollo presides over the poetic sciences, the crown is made for poets. He says, "Unless perhaps Apollo," as if to say it seems a presumption to speak always of that tree loved by Phoebus, who might become indignant against his poet, Master Francesco.

Fran. I

SO DISTRACTED. In the four preceding sonnets after his preface, Master Francesco Petrarch first showed the beginning of his love, which on that day could in no way have happened if her beauty had not been almost more than human. This had all the more impact because supreme virtue original: honesta was joined with that beauty. Then, in the following sonnet (which was the third according to the order mentioned above), he declared how much progress love had made within him, and that he was wounded in such a way that he could no longer help himself from his own torment. Afterward, in the first sonnet following that, he added the reason why her beauty should not be esteemed less simply because she was born of less than noble stock or in a famous place. After all these things said in the sonnet heard before the present one, and after the commendation of her beauty—

SONNET VI.

So distracted is my mad desire
To follow her who is turned in flight,
And from the snares of love, light and loose,
She flies before my slow running;
For the more I call it back to the path
Through the secure road, the less it listens to me:
Nor does it avail me to spur it or turn it;
For Love by his nature makes it rebellious.
And after it takes the bit by force for itself,
I remain in his lordship,
Who against my will carries me to death
Only to come to the laurel; from which is gathered
Bitter fruit; which, tasting another's wounds,
Afflicts more than it comforts.