GUIDO CAVALCANTI
SONNET XXXV
To Guido Orlandi. He explains the miracles of the Madonna of Or San Michele, by telling whose image it is.
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Una figura della Donna mia E qual con devozion lei s’umilìa, Sana ’n publico loco gran langori; La voce va per lontane camina, |
MY Lady's face it is they worship there. Trans. Ezra Pound, 1912 |
Note: The number XXXV corresponds to Pound's numbering in his volume, The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti. Boston: Small, Maynard and Co, 1912. Otherwise, the sonnet is numbered 48.
Madrigal
In answer to the foregoing Sonnet.
- If thou hadst offer'd, friend, to blessed Mary
- A pious voluntary,
- As thus: “Fair rose, in holy garden set:”
- Thou then hadst found a true similitude:
- Because all truth and good
- Are hers, who was the mansion and the gate
- Wherein abode our High Salvation,
- Conceived in her, a Son,
- Even by the angel's greeting whom she met.
- 10Be thou assured that if one cry to her,
- Confessing, “I did err,”
- For death she gives him life; for she is great.
- Ah! how may'st thou be counsell'd to implead
- With God thine own misdeed,
- And not another's? Ponder what thou art;
- And humbly lay to heart
- That Publican who wept his proper need.
REFERENCES
Cavalcanti, Guido. Una figura della donna mia. it.wikisource.org. Web. 1 June 2016.
Orlandi, Guido. Madrigal. Trans. D.G. Rossetti. Early Italian Poets, 1861. 334-335. rossettiarchive.org.
Pound, Ezra. Poems and Translations. Ed. Richard Sieburth. New York: Library of America, 2003.
