"I' vidi in terra angelici costumi."
I once beheld on earth celestial graces,
And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,
Whose memory lends nor joy nor grief alone,
But all things else bewilders and effaces.
I saw how tears had left their weary traces
Within those eyes that once like sunbeams shone,
I heard those lips breathe low and plaintive moan,
Whose spell might once have taught the hills their places.
Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth,
Made ill their mourning strains more high and dear
Than ever wove sweet sounds for mortal ear;
And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth
The very leaves upon the boughs to soothe,
Such passionate sweetness filled the atmosphere.
These sonnets are in Petrarch's earlier manner; but the death of Laura
brought a change. Look at yonder schooner coming down the bay, straight
toward us; she is hauled close to the wind, her jib is white in the
sunlight, her larger sails are touched with the same snowy lustre, and
all the swelling canvas is rounded into such lines of beauty as
scarcely anything else in the world--hardly even the perfect outlines
of the human form--can give. Now she comes up into the wind, and goes
about with a strong flapping of the sails, smiting on the ear at a
half-mile's distance; then she glides off on the other tack, showing
the shadowed side of her sails, until she reaches the distant zone of
haze. So change the sonnets after Laura's death, growing shadowy as
they recede, until the very last seems to merge itself in the blue
distance.