"Quando Amor i begli occhi a terra inchina."
When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline,
And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh
Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy
Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,
He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine,
And to my thoughts brings transformation high,
So that I say, "My time has come to die,
If fate so blest a death for me design."
But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound
Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven,
It holds my spirit back to earth as well.
And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound
The thread of life which unto me was given
By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.
As I look across the bay, there is seen resting over all the hills, and
even upon every distant sail, an enchanted veil of palest blue, that
seems woven out of the very souls of happy days,--a bridal veil, with
which the sunshine weds this soft landscape in summer. Such and so
indescribable is the atmospheric film that hangs over these poems of
Petrarch's; there is a delicate haze about the words, that vanishes
when you touch them, and reappears as you recede. How it clings, for
instance, around this sonnet!