ON THE PAPAL COURT AT AVIGNON

  Fountain of woe!  Harbour of endless ire! 
    Thou school of errors, haunt of hérésies! 
    Once Rome, now Babylon, the world’s disease,
    That maddenest men with fears and fell desire! 
  O forge of fraud!  O prison dark and dire,
    Where dies the good, where evil breeds increase! 
    Thou living Hell!  Wonders will never cease
    If Christ rise not to purge thy sins with fire. 
  Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
    Against thy founders thou dost raise thy horn,
    Thou shameless harlot!  And whence flows this pride? 
  Even from foul and loathed adultery,
    The wage of lewdness.  Constantine, return! 
    Not so:  the felon world its fate must bide.

TO STEFANO COLONNA

WRITTEN FROM VAUCLUSE

  Glorius Colonna, thou on whose high head
    Rest all our hopes and the great Latin name,
    Whom from the narrow path of truth and fame
    The wrath of Jove turned not with stormful dread: 
  Here are no palace-courts, no stage to tread;
    But pines and oaks the shadowy valleys fill
    Between the green fields and the neighbouring hill,
    Where musing oft I climb by fancy led. 
  These lift from earth to heaven our soaring soul,
    While the sweet nightingale, that in thick bowers
    Through darkness pours her wail of tuneful woe,
  Doth bend our charmed breast to love’s control;
    But thou alone hast marred this bliss of ours,
    Since from our side, dear lord, thou needs must go.

IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA.  XI

ON LEAVING AVIGNON

  Backward at every weary step and slow
    These limbs I turn which with great pain I bear;
    Then take I comfort from the fragrant air
    That breathes from thee, and sighing onward go. 
  But when I think how joy is turned to woe,
    Remembering my short life and whence I fare,
    I stay my feet for anguish and despair,
    And cast my tearful eyes on earth below. 
  At times amid the storm of misery
    This doubt assails me:  how frail limbs and poor
    Can severed from their spirit hope to live. 
  Then answers Love:  Hast thou no memory
    How I to lovers this great guerdon give,
    Free from all human bondage to endure?

IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA.  XII

THOUGHTS IN ABSENCE

  The wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow
    Leaves the beloved spot where he hath passed his years,
    Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears,
    To see their father’s tottering steps and slow. 
  Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe,
    In these last days of life he nothing fears,
    But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers,
    And spent and wayworn forward still doth go;
  Then comes to Rome, following his heart’s desire,
    To gaze upon the portraiture of Him
    Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see: 
  Thus I, alas! my seeking spirit tire,
    Lady, to find in other features dim
    The longed for, loved, true linéaments of thee.

IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA.  LII

OH THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE A DOVE!

  I am so tired beneath the ancient load
    Of my misdeeds and custom’s tyranny,
    That much I fear to fail upon the road
    And yield my soul unto mine enemy. 
  ’Tis true a friend from whom all splendour flowed,
    To save me came with matchless courtesy: 
    Then flew far up from sight to heaven’s abode,
    So that I strive in vain his face to see. 
  Yet still his voice reverberates here below: 
    Oh ye who labour, lo! the path is here;
    Come unto me if none your going stay! 
  What grace, what love, what fate surpassing fear
    Shall give me wings like dove’s wings soft as snow,
    That I may rest and raise me from the clay?

IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA.  XXIV

  The eyes whereof I sang my fervid song,
    The arms, the hands, the feet, the face benign,
    Which severed me from what was rightly mine,
    And made me sole and strange amid the throng,
  The crisped curls of pure gold beautiful,
    And those angelic smiles which once did shine
    Imparadising earth with joy divine,
    Are now a little dust - dumb, deaf, and dull. 
  And yet I live! wherefore I weep and wail,
    Left alone without the light I loved so long,
    Storm-tossed upon a bark that hath no sail. 
  Then let me here give o’er my amorous song;
    The fountains of old inspiration fail,
    And nought but woe my dolorous chords prolong.

IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA.  XXXIV

  In thought I raised me to the place where she
    Whom still on earth I seek and find not, shines;
    There ’mid the souls whom the third sphere confines,
    More fair I found her and less proud to me. 
  She took my hand and said:  Here shalt thou be
    With me ensphered, unless desires mislead;
    Lo!  I am she who made thy bosom bleed,
    Whose day ere eve was ended utterly: 
  My bliss no mortal heart can understand;
    Thee only do I lack, and that which thou
    So loved, now left on earth, my beauteous veil. 
  Ah! wherefore did she cease and loose my hand? 
    For at the sound of that celestial tale
    I all but stayed in paradise till now.

IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA.  LXXIV

  The flower of angels and the spirits blest,
    Burghers of heaven, on that first day when she
    Who is my lady died, around her pressed
    Fulfilled with wonder and with piety. 
  What light is this?  What beauty manifest? 
    Marvelling they cried:  for such supremacy
    Of splendour in this age to our high rest
    Hath never soared from earth’s obscurity. 
  She, glad to have exchanged her spirit’s place,
    Consorts with those whose virtues most exceed;
    At times the while she backward turns her face
  To see me follow - seems to wait and plead: 
    Therefore toward heaven my will and soul I raise,
    Because I hear her praying me to speed.