Sonnet IV
by Guido Cavalcanti (1250 – 1300)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translation
To a Friend who does not pity his Love
IF I entreat this lady that all grace
Seem not unto her heart an enemy,
Foolish and evil thou declarest me,
And desperate in idle stubbornness.
Whence is such cruel judgement thine, whose face,
To him that looks thereon, professeth thee
Faithful, and wise, and of all courtesy,
And made after the way of gentleness?
Alas! my soul within my heart doth find
Sighs, and its grief by weeping doth enhance,
That, drowned in bitter tears, those sighs depart:
And then there seems a presence in the mind,
As of a lady’s thoughtful countenance
Come to behold the death of the poor heart.
Sonnet XXIII
To Dante, rebuking him for his way of life after the death of Beatrice.
I DAILY come to thee uncounting times
And find thee ever thinking over vilely;
Much doth it grieve me that thy noble mind
And virtue’s plenitude are stripped from thee;
Thou wast so careless in thy fine offending,
Who from the rabble alway held apart,
And spoke of me so straightly from the heart
That I gave welcome to thine every rime.
And now I care not, sith thy life is baseness
To give the sign that thy speech pleaseth me,
Nor come I to thee in guise visible,
Yet if thou’It read this Sonnet many a time,
That malign spirit which so hunteth thee
Will sound forloyn* and spare thy affrighted soul.
*The recall of the hounds.
Fourteen Lines 