GASPARA STAMPA.

GASPARA STAMPA.
BY EUGENE BENSON.

With

a Selection from her Sonnets
TRANSLATED BY

GEORGE FLEMING,
AUTHOR OF " K I S M E T , " " MIRAGE," " THE HEAD OF
MEDUSA."

BOSTON:
ROBERTS

BROTHERS.
1881.

Copyright, 1881,
B Y ROBERTS BROTHERS.

UNIVERSITY

PRESS:

J O H N W I L S O N AND SON,

CAMBRIDGE.

GASPARA STAMPA:
A VENETIAN

SAPPHO.

GASPARA STAMPA.

I.
To reach the personages of a great
epoch through some minor interest, to
know more of a great age than is seen
on the highways of history, has all the
charm of personal acquaintance. Something of this may be had in learning what
is to be told of Gaspara Stampa. Her
story is so romantic, she was in her way
so distinguished, she was so representative of the rich and impassioned natures
of the most luxuriant time of Italian civilization, that, coming upon it from our
own day, it seems for the moment inter-

io

GASPARA

STAMPA.

esting and vital, like a contemporary
thing.

The self-surrender of an ardent

and superior woman to an exalted ideal
of love gives life to words long since
uttered, and revives the perilous stuff of
passions long sunk in rest. It is a Venetian story.

It links names of high inter-

est,— Varchi, Titian, Sansovino, Aretino,
Monsignore della Casa, Navagero, Molino, Caro, and the Lord of Collalto, who
inspired an extravagant, a tenacious, and
an unfortunate love.
It takes us to famous and delightful
places, now set in the splendor of Venice,
then in the gardens of Murano, or at the
castle of Collalto, which is invested with
a tender and romantic charm by the
verse of a beautiful and unhappy woman.
The castle is still to be seen in the richness of its Renaissance style on one of
the foothills of the Venetian Alps.

Over-

GASPARA STAMP A.

n

looking the Trevesian plain, and above
the wild Piave,— shrunk in summer to
narrow limits, yet showing the wide, white,
stony way of its swollen waters when it
comes, raging, in its long rock-bound
course from Cadore and Val de Miel to
the Adriatic Sea, — it is a place for a
king and a poet. I saw it first on a day of
autumn. The landscape was mellow and
hazy, the air was still. Behind the castle
the Alps lifted their strange and solemn
walls of startling blue, while over the
plain and towards the sea everything
seemed melting in a world of light.
Tower, drawbridge, chapel, and palace
are more princely than warlike, meant
rather for opulent and delightful life
than as a place of defence. The outer
walls and the chapel are decorated by
Pordenone, and here too Schiavone left
the jewelled brightness of his color. The

12

GASPARA

STAMPA.

chapel also has frescoes by Giotto, or of
his time. The castle is still kept up by the
family of Collalto, — a family of remote
and illustrious origin, royal in its connections, rich and powerful to this day. But
illustrious as their name is, I refer to it
now only because of its association with
that of Gaspara Stampa, who was often a
guest in theit castle.
In the noble and elegant hospitality
of a great house, surrounded by a landscape of extreme beauty, she spent perhaps the most enchanting days of her
life. She was said to have " inspired in
other members of the family of Collalto
an enthusiasm so lively and sympathetic
that the lordly castle became periodically
for her a delightful home and the source
of infinite joys." In herself she represented the loveliest interests of a high
and fine society. Her beauty, her gifts v

GASPARA

STAMPA,

and accomplishments made her famous
in Venice. Poets, prelates, painters, and
patricians were her friends. Her voice
and her musical talent, — for she played
on the lute, — her verses, and her conversation, made her the object of a most
precious admiration.
The two passions of her time were for
glory and love, knightly fame and beauty.
From Petrarch and Aretino came the two
influences which inspired and quickened
these two ideals, — Aretino in the pay of
princes, dear to soldiers, gamblers, and
libertines, and not without potent relations with some of the noblest men; Petrarch enlisting the Platonists, that is to
say, the idealists, the lovers of all that is
exalted and exquisite and difficult. Gaspara Stampa called him her master. Under the direct and irresistible inspiration
of a consuming passion, her lyrical genius

GASPARA

STAMPA.

broke into the most fervid expression, and
made her famous. She was called " Saffo
de' nostri tempi alta Caspar a " by a celebrated Florentine poet of her day.

Her

naturalness, her sincerity, her abandonment to the emotions that swayed her,
and the depth and force of her passion,
carried her beyond the limit of Petrarch's
more studied expression, gave a more
acute cry, a more impassioned note to
her verse, than Petrarch's self-regarding
genius and dominating art would allow
him to indulge in.

But if the sense of

art is less with her, the sense of nature,
of sincerity, is more; and she is closer to
our modern sympathies, for we seem to
see her palpitating with emotion, know
the pulse-beat of her life under the very
stress and pressure of her brief experience.
It was the character of the sixteenth

GASPARA STAMPA.

15

century to be magnificent, and instead of
checking the play of human forces, to
evoke them. It was a time of full manhood and womanhood, vital and complete
both in virtue and in vice. From the
private life of this time Gaspara Stampa
comes to give expression to the preoccupations of her heart, without shame, without immodesty, naturally, as though to
love and be loved were the whole of a
woman's existence. It was the only
object of the Venetian woman's life.
Gaspara Stampa is quite a Shakespearian
type,—simple, tender, ardent, staking all
on the prosperity of her love : that turned
away, life is without remedy for the hurt.
Venetian women, when not of this quality,
and of this exacting nature, treat the accidents of love, true or false, as an amusement, a diversion, more or less, in a
limited existence. The more heroic stuff

16

GASPARA

STAMPA.

of noble pride had small place in her
character. She was not like a Roman
woman. She had nothing of that firmness and heroic quality and fierce ambition, which would unsex her, making
her an awful figure of Tragedy. She was
but like a flower. We have seen her in
the pictures of the great masters. We
admire and love her; we do not worship
or fear her. She is not a goddess, not an
awe-inspiring virgin; no Madonna, like
the solemn Mother of God, the Byzantine's ideal. Even in her religious
character, as the Madonna, she is the
tenderest, sweetest, quietest girl-mother;
a being full of dignity, and, perhaps, the
most gracious feminine type the world
has ever known. In religion, in public
life, in art, in poetry, she is essentially
the same in all her leading traits. For
the most part submissive, charming,—

GASPARA

STAMPA.

ly

a rest and a satisfaction; occupied with
music, with pleasant company;

prefer-

ring splendor and joy as proper to her,
and the best adornment of her life; having the gift of beauty, and tranquilly
happy in its display.
The most famous daughter of Venice,
Catherine Cornaro, a queen, yielding the
sovereignty of Cyprus, was satisfied to
lead a sumptuous, cultivated, and hospitable life under the protection of the Great
Republic, seeing and being seen by the
elite of her time; now in her royal seat
on the Trevisian plain, or in her castle
above the chestnut woods of Asolo. Gaspara Stampa, surrendered to an emotional
life, found in music, and poetry, and the
passion of love the end of her being.
These two are purely feminine types,
representative of all Venetian women.
Gaspara Stampa had occupied herself

18

GASPARA

STAMPA.

with the fine conceptions of an ideal life,
and when she saw the young Lord of
CoJlalto for the first time, she felt that
sudden passion which I sometimes think
burns with so great ardor only in Italian
natures, and which, it is well known, has
been celebrated by Italian poets, and by
Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet.

It

bursts like a great fire, and is, in truth,
a kind of conflagration

wrapping the

whole being of meridional

men

and

women. It is honest, uncalculating; and
from the time of the Greek to the Italian
poets, from Sappho of Lesbos to the
Sappho of Venice, has been superbly
expressed; winning admiration and sympathy, deepening our sense of the force
and fatality of certain associations which
involve the primordial elements of our
being.

It always leads to catastrophe,

and it is always tragic.

Prosaic persons

GASPARA

STAMPA.

are happily incapable of knowing

it;

imaginative minds suffer from i t ; Gaspara Stampa's story illustrates its development.
She was born in Padua, of a Milanese
family.

Losing her father at an early age,

she owed to the care of her mother " the
excellent instruction " which she received.
She knew Greek and Latin, and added to
the accomplishment of languages a delightful and -well-trained voice, which she
accompanied with the lute.

She went

with her family to Venice, and remained
heart-free to the age of twenty-six.

A

Venetian poet, Parabosco, organist of St.
Marco, has left a description of her. H e
wrote : " Never would you believe it possible to find so much perfection in one
human being; so much beauty joined to
so much grace, and sweetness, and good
sense. But what shall I say of her angelic

GASPARA

STAMPA.

voice, the accents of which penetrate the
coldest hearts, and bring tears to the
eyes ?"
Parabosco composed, and had executed on the occasion of her death, a
funeral chant of six voices, which is said
to be still preserved in the library of St.
Mark at Venice.
Few destinies seemed more enviable
than Gaspara Stampa's at Venice when
but twenty-six.

She was young; she

loved and was loved by the Count of
Collalto, the heir of one of the proudest
houses in the north of Italy.
the same age as herself.

He was of

H e was a poet,

and poets and writers looked to him as
to a cultivated and "splendid prince."
Betussi dedicated his Italian translation
of the Latin of Boccaccio's " Genealogy
of the Gods " to Collalto, declaring him
to be " as distinguished an ornament to

GASPARA

STAMPA.

letters as to arms."

21

H e was a knight

fairly dazzling with the lustre of hereditary glory, noble in form and handsome
in face; and he made no secret of his
passion for the famous and
Venetian.

beautiful

For three years he remained

her devoted lover.

But the ambition of

the soldier awoke in him, aroused, perhaps, by the personal influence of Aretino.
Invited by Henry II., he left the Venetian
states and Gaspara Stampa for the court
and camp of the French king.

Gaspara

Stampa has described him as he appeared
to her, and as Titian painted him. Splendid and chivalric, he went to France, and
became enthralled by the famous Diane
de Poitiers.
The Venetian poet has expressed all
her own experience of love and abandonment in sonnets which are the very outpouring of her heart.

They reveal her

GASPARA

STAMPA.

impassioned nature, her

anguish, and

her despair; they render her name famous throughout Italy.

It was even said

that no verse more sweet and elegant
and impassioned had ever been written.
It is the record of a heart-breaking
tragedy, but it celebrates hours of triumphant joy.

How proudly happy she

was she tells us in many ways.
A noble and tender-natured woman,
she had given her heart beyond recall to
the Lord of Collalto.

His absence, his

silence, his return to Italy, and his indifference to her, turned the sweetness of
life to poison; the very sensibility and
imagination which made her so charming
and interesting, rendered her suffering the
more afflicting and incurable. The Count
of Collalto had not been long at home
before it was rumored that he was about
to marry a lady of rank.

The unhap-

GASPARA

STAMPA.

piness, the anguish of Gaspara, too great
for her endurance, made life intolerable
to her.

She had neither father

nor

brother at the most critical time of her
life.

Her

gifted

brother,

Baldassare,

who had won the esteem and affection of
some of the most distinguished men of
his day, died before her, and she suffered
a double grief, — losing him and abandoned by her lover.

She was left de-

fenceless, without support, in the extreme
anguish of her life, without the force or
the wish to resist the wreck of her happiness.

She soon

died, poisoned, —

whether by her own hand or by that of
another was never known.

She was not

yet thirty.
Her verses — some sixty or seventy
sonnets and a score of madrigals — were
collected by her sister, who published
them, with a letter from herself to a

24

GASPARA

STAMPA.

famous poet of the day.

This edition

(1556) does not exist in the library of
St. Mark at Venice.

The oldest edition

extant was published in 1738.

It con-

tains the poems of her brother, and some
sonnets by the Lord of Collalto.
Gaspara was born in 1523 and died in
1553, followed by tributes of admiration
and love from many of the first men of
her time.

Varchi, Florentine poet and

exile, said he consoled himself with the
thought that she would live

forever.

Sansovino, the "courteous and gentle"
friend of Titian, called her noble and
virtuous.

Even Gozzi, in the last cen-

tury, celebrated her in two sonnets. Tiraboschi wrote of her that she was one of
the most elegant versifiers of her time,
worthy to be classed with the most illustrious poets.

Betuzzi, in an elegy on her

death, says: " O Love, veil thy face and

GASPARA

STAMPA.

break thy bow, for she whose eyes mirrored thee is dead."
She has been called one of the seven
gems of Venice, and, with Monsignore
della Casa, one of the two poets of the
century the least addicted to imitating Petrarch; and for originality and naturalness, without vulgarity, her verse

is

pronounced to be superior to the prelate's.

She has been named with Vittoria

Colonna and Veronica Gambara as one
of the three most distinguished poets of
their sex in Italy.

An illustrious woman

of the sixteenth century, Lucrezia Gonzaga, who had been taught by Bandello
and Pico della Mirandola, in one of her
letters, published in Venice in 1552, expressed herself in the following manner
about her: —
" I have read more than a thousand times
the sonnet composed by the noble lady Gas-

26

GASPARA

STAMPA.

para Stampa. It appeared to me so marvellously, so beautifully done, that I was in
doubt to believe it composed by a woman;
for the Marchesa di Pescara and Lady Veronica Gambara have fled to heaven. It
would have been incredible to me had I not
seen her converse in such a manner that I
can well believe it her own. I withhold here
many proofs which others have given of her
rare intellect.',
It is melancholy to think of such a
woman so miserably sacrificed to the
passion of love.

Her intercourse with

the noblest and most celebrated men of
her age afforded no protection against
an incurable and fatal passion.

She was

perhaps the most distinguished and the
most charming woman in Venice, but
she was not of the patrician class, and
the Count of Collalto could not marry
her without excluding his male issue from
patrician functions and privileges.

GASPARA

STAMPA.

Forty-three years ago Luigi Carrer resuscitated the story of Gaspara Stampa,
and in 1851 his little book was republished, entitled " The Unhappy Love
of Gaspara Stampa." It is a collection
of letters purporting to be written by
her. They are written with a full sense
of her passionate exultation, her delightful nature, her charming sensibility; but
the language, according to the most
learned set centisti, is not sufficiently ancient. The letters are fictitious. They
are none the less an interesting and fervid
expression of the character and sentiment
of her experience. They give one many
interesting things. The book is chiefly
derived from her sonnets; it holds a
series of pictures of Venetian life, of poets, musicians, painters, and nobles, who
come and go; the funeral of a doge; a
delightful garden party in the lovely island

28

GASPARA

STAMPA.

of Murano, then a pleasure place for the
patrician families of Venice. In this
charming and splendid life of the time of
Titian, the tragic love of Gaspara Stampa
comes like a beautiful meteor. As we
watch its fervid splendor, it burns to its
own destruction, suddenly lost in the wide,
deep spaces of night.
Her poems have not been widely read,
but they have been well read. For a long
time no edition was accessible to me; but
once in Venice I was rejoiced to get in
my hands the edition of 1738. It is the
record of so much adoration, so much
ecstasy, so much sorrow, that perhaps it
never fails to touch the heart and imagination of any one capable of sympathizing
with the victim of a great and generous
passion.
It was on Christmas Day that Gaspara
Stampa first saw the Lord of Collalto, —

GASPARA

STAMPA.

the knight of all others to quicken and
possess the heart of a tender and gifted
girl.

She surrenders herself to a perfect

adoration and is in a state of beatitude.
" Angels of heaven," she cries in her
transport, " I do not envy your ineffable
joys, nor your souls full of that which
they desire, nor your ecstasy before the
All-Powerful; for my happiness here below is such that only earthly hearts would
know how to contain it.

All that which

you feel in seeing God face to face I feel
before this being who is so perfectly made
in his image.

Your only privilege is that

your joys are eternal, while mine can very
soon come to an end."
It was in the nature of things that a
young man of rank, trained to feats of
arms and fired with the renown of the
great captains, the condottieri of his time,
could not or would not give himself for-

GASPARA

STAMPA.

ever to a pastoral life.

Even in Italy

Arcadian pleasures are not likely to last
to the age of thirty. After three years of
delight in delightsome Italy— now at his
castle, now in Venice — Collalto sought
military glory in France.

The reproach

of his mistress was not that he left her,
fondly as she wished idyllic days of peace
and love to last forever: her sorrow was
that she was left to live through dreary
days and weeks and months unconsoled
by any word from her lover. Her poems
show the fluctuation of every emotion a
betrayed, a passionate, a tenacious heart
can feel; they describe a state of mind
which offers something more than a merely literary interest.

Her exaltation and

abasement, her reaction, " sometimes pathetic, sometimes sublime, against the
passion which

subjugates

her," make

these extraordinary effusions

uniquely

GASPARA

STAMPA.

expressive of a woman's

imagination

become the accomplice of her ruin.

She

writes : —
"O you who by the favor of heaven are
predestined to love, complain not of your sufferings, for the martyrdoms of love are blessings. Were I to be the victim of mine, I
never would regret it. I prefer torments endured for so beautiful a cause to all joys
which come from vile and mean things."
But if she yields herself to the impulsion of her desire, and is carried joyously on the full tide of her hopes, she
also cowers and moans, lashed by the
Furies, which are apt to follow all extreme emotion, all extravagant passion ;
for there is no security but in calm; and
wisdom and power are in the equilibrium
of forces, not in their excess.

Realizing

this through her intelligence, she stops in
the very whirlwind of her sighs and invokes her sex: —

32

GASPARA
u

STAMPA.

Women who till now have been free from
the ties of love with which I and so many
others are bound, do you long to know what
is this love which not our age but antiquity
made a god ? It is an ardent affection, a vain
desire of fleeting shadows, a wilful fraud, an
oblivion of one's self and one's good. It is to
seek in spite of anguish that which is never
found ; or, if found, brings regret and remorse and evil. It feeds one's life with hope
only. It inspires cold jealousy and doubt.
It is a snare which binds and loosens its
hold at the pleasure of another; it is a dream,
scattering seed from which fair fruit is never
plucked ; it is a biting care which oppresses
the heart; it destroys one's liberty and joy
and peace. It is to die, and not know why
you die. It is an inward consuming fire. It
is to be always pale and trembling and lost
and not know that you are lost. It is to
shrink before a beloved face, and to be bold
away from it. It is to hate your own life and
love another's. It is to be distressed and
sombre. . . . It is to feel indifferent to
every study and fly from society. It is to

GASPARA

STAMPA.

become strange to one's self and to betray
one's self to another. It is to brood over
vain fancies and futile dreams, which, as dust
blown by the wind, is driven away. . . . It
is to be sleepless at night and to get up irritated and disdainful. It is to see but one
face in which to mirror one's self, but one
thing to trust though far away. It is an evil
which flatters and torments."
And again: —
"These, O Love, are thy fruits, — briefest
delights and endless pain such as I endure, —
I who was and am thy slave. Thus, as autumn suddenly robs the trees of their leaves,
if thy hand gives us some good, suddenly it
takes it back again."
The interest of the foregoing is chiefly
psychological.

It is a diagnosis of a

state of being.

She is more engaging

in the following: —
" Upon the rich and famous shore of the
Adriatic, sweet nest of the graces of love,

GASPARA

STAMPA.

where one lives delightfully, I wait for my
absent lord. When the sun vanishes into
the night, or when the dawn returns again,
I sigh for him to relieve my desire, and I call
for him with these cries. O ye shores who
hear them, repeat them to him. And thou,
loved mate and faithful dove, who knowest
how much one fears, how much one loves,
when flying hither and thither, go near my
delight and repeat my lament to him ; tell
him how hard and uncertain is my state, now
that I am so far from him through ill-fortune,
and not through my fault. And thou, nightingale, when desire urges thee to breathe out
thy lament with such a song as no voice can
ever equal, tell him when thou art saddest
that my own life becomes a dark night since
I am deprived of his sweet eyes. And thou,
Echo, inhabiting solitary caverns, repeat to
his ears my sorrow. And ye, soft zephyrs
and amorous winds, gather together all my
sighs and leave them with my lord."
In the anguish of her despair she
writes to the Lord of Collalto, " I f you

GASPARA

STAMPA.

hear not my cries, Love or Death shall.''
In less miserable days she consoles herself with a vision of the home of her
lover, and in language worthy of a lament
for Adonis, she utters her sincere love
and passionate desire.

Her verse is full

of the most tender and moving grace of
expression.

It does not belong to the

well-regulated conditions of our modern
business world, our world without leisure, where all personal and passionate
preferences are either voiceless or muffled
by decorum.

It touches us and delights

• us only in proportion with our love of
nature and imaginative capacity to sympathize with extreme emotions which have
died for us, or are outside of our life.
The Sappho of Venice uttered her lament and poured out her passion of love,
of sorrow, and died, perhaps by her own
hand, as died the Sappho of Lesbos.

36

GASPARA

STAMPA.

Shakespeare's sonnets celebrate this same
unmeasured passion, which to our age
seems extravagant

and 'reprehensible.

We characterize as folly " all misplaced
affection," overlooking the fact that whatever subjugates the will and enslaves the
imagination of superior persons holds
something divine or demoniacal.
Most of our poetry, which is a flower
grown in the rarefied air of our moral and
intellectual life, offers nothing like the
sonnets of those who may be called the
Italian passionists.

In frigid regions we

shiver at the very idea of nakedness,
and everything is clad by decorum or
necessity.
I sometimes think much of our poetry
is like the edelweiss of Alpine heights,
which is clad in a flannel jacket and has
but faint perfume; but it grows near the
snow, and we are grateful for it there.

GASPARA

STAMPA.

Down on the tepid plains of Italy everything is different.
sive.

Life is more expan-

The sun, the fruits, the wine, the

air, all the supports of the richest civilization, — a million softening and inviting
and evoking influences streaming about
the every-day life,—form men and women
who are inexplicable without some acquaintance with the south of

Europe,

where the moonlight is mellowest, the
nightingale sings in dissolving notes, the
dove complains in softest sound; where
orange trees sweeten the air with whitest
blossoms, or are loaded with golden fruit;
where frail and flesh-pale roses bloom in
winter, and statues of marble gleam in
stillness under stateliest pines of classic
form; where the flickering sunlight and
silvering breeze among the sharp and delicate-leaved olives make a world all but
irresistible and full of intoxication to the

38

GASPARA

STAMPA.

senses; where men and women are beautiful like statues and pictures, and quick
and spontaneous like children.
A critical sense, as we know it in Paris
and London and New York, is not native
to Italy, the land of enthusiasms, of ardors, of passions.

Poetry and art and

love are at home in it.

The rest of

Europe has studied the expression of its
life and genius these many centuries.
The great masters of its literature and
art are known.

Below its great fixed

stars is a world of poets, chiefly interesting for, and significant of, a whole order
of sensations proper to Italian life.

The

story and sonnets of Gaspara Stampa,
while pre-eminently personal, are also
representative of a race and an epoch.
They come from the fecund and prodigal
sixteenth century,—magnificent time, when
religion, war, art, and poetry were splen-

GASPARA

STAMPA.

didly illustrated by great churchmen,
great captains, great painters, great musicians, and great poets. It was about
one hundred years after the revival of
Greek and Latin literature that Gaspara
Stampa was born. She grew up among
the purists and humanists of the later
phase of the revival of learning in Italy.
But she was pushed beyond the merely
critical and literary and artistic effort of
the scholars and poets of her time by an
intense personal experience, without which
the highest, the deepest note of poetry is
not possible. It made of her more than
an elegant versifier, like Bembo : it made
of her an impassioned lyric poet. What
Sapphic energy in this, for example : —
" I burned, I wept, I sang; I burn, sing, weep again,
And I shall weep and sing, I shall forever burn
Until or death or time or fortune's turn
Shall still my eye and heart, still fire and pain."

40

GASPARA

STAMPA.

The day came when, wearied, discouraged, appalled, she deplored her experience and said:

" 0 you who for the

first time set sail upon the deep and
stormy sea of passion where so many
women have been wrecked, this is the
advice I give you above all: Attach yourselves to noble souls, and you shall never
be abandoned."
she wrote :

And for her epitaph

" Here lies the most faithful

lover that ever lived."
Before her tragic death she arranged
her sonnets and madrigals, and sent them
to the Lord of Collalto with the following
letter: —
" M Y ILLUSTRIOUS L O R D : — Since all the

pains of love, which for your sake I endure,
and which I have expressed to you in so many
letters and verses, have failed, one after the
the other, to make you compassionate toward
me, or even courteous enough to write me
one word, I have resolved to gather them all

GASPARA

STAMPA.

in this volume, and prove if together they
may not do it. In this, therefore, your lordship will see, not the abyss of my passion, of
my tears, of my torments, — for it is a bottomless sea, — but a mere little brook running
out of it. I would not have your lordship
think that I do this to make you acquainted
with your own cruelty, since there can be no
cruelty where there is no obligation ; not to
vex you, but rather to make you know your
own greatness, and to gladden you. And
since all these fruits grew out of your harshness toward me, you may imagine what
would be those that might grow out of your
compassion if it ever happened that Heaven
rendered you compassionate, O noble, O
dazzling, O divine being! since, while you
make me suffer, you help me to write. In
your rest either from dearer or more important occupations read these notes of the deep
love-sorrow of your faithful and unfortunate
Anasilla (a name Gaspara took from the
Anasso, the ancient name of the Piave), and
from this shadow judge of what she suffers
and fears in her soul. If ever it should happen

42

GASPARA

STAMPA.

that my poor and sad house be found worthy
to welcome your lordship as its guest, I know
that the beds, the rooms, the halls, and every
bit of space shall repeat the moans and sobs,
the sighs and tears, which, night and day, I
have shed or uttered, repeating your name,
blessing God or my good fortune, from the
depths of my darkest anguish, for its very
object; since it is a million times sweeter
dying for you, my lord, than enjoying life
through another. But what am I doing ? Do
I not unnecessarily weary your lordship,
and even insult my own rhymes, as if they
would not tell their tale, or required explanation ? Trusting myself to them, I will stop,
imploring your lordship, as a last reward of
my fidelity, that, in receiving this poor little
book, you may grant me the consolation of a
sigh breathed from afar over the memory of
your abandoned and forgotten Anasilla. And
thou, my little book, safe depository of my
tears, I humbly present thee to our lord, companioned by my sincerest faith ; and if when
thou art received thou shouldst beget some
gleam of light in those eternally fatal eyes,

GASPARA

STAMPA.

blessed be all our labor, and our most blissful
hopes, and thus I remain by thee forever in
peace."
This last appeal seems to have brought
no consoling response.
came.

The end soon

Three centuries have gone over

her name and fame, and both from time to
time are revived, and last by a republication of her sonnets with the imprint of a
Florentine house.

Her verse seems to

make an impression and reaches the public through the personal sympathy and
admiration which it inspires.

The great

name of Leopardi rescued one of her
madrigals from oblivion.

H e gave it a

place in his " Crestomazia Poetica." But
much of such a publication is only like a
cemetery, where monuments, tablets, and
effigies after all mean that the dead are
under them.

Because her verse palpi-

tates with invincible love, it yet lives.

44

GASPARA

STAMPA.

This staff of human life, reaching us with
the charm of art, comes from an old
century of splendor. Some note of its
music is caught, some sound from it, some
glimpse of it. It gives us a moment of
sympathy, of consciousness. Like a breaking wave spreading on the level sands, it
implies the greater sea from which it
comes.

II.
fortune took me to the very palace of Collalto at Venice. I was looking
for a Venetian garden of the Renaissance. The palace is one of the noblest,
not well known now, away from the Grand
Canal. I went into its garden. I sat behind an old, wrought-iron grating, opening on one of the smaller canals. I sat
perhaps in the very place where, in other
days, Gaspara and Collalto, under the
blossoming pomegranate and under the
vine, may have enjoyed the cool and secluded quiet. Nor is it difficult, with the
story of her life before us, to imagine her
gracing the garden parties of the patriGOOD

46

GASPARA

STAMPA.

cians of her time. It is not improbable
that she was at Titian's garden, where,
on summer evenings, it was his custom to
entertain the most distinguished persons.
He kept open house for his friends, Sansovino and Aretino. One of his parties
has been described by a Florentine who
visited Venice in 1553. Had he been at
Titian's house when Gaspara and Collalto
were there, doubtless he would have mentioned the fact, perhaps described them.
How the young Lord of Collalto looked
we can well imagine, for Titian's portrait
and Gaspara's own vivid words help us
to do so. Of Gaspara herself, no well
authenticated portrait is to be seen.
A seventeenth-century ideal head, given
with several editions of her poems, is
bad and dubious, and to be rejected. It
may be that Titian painted her, but I
believe she is only to be seen 'in the

GASPARA

mind's eye/

STAMPA.

47

Let us imagine her, and

the young and beautiful Irene of Spilemburg, Titian's sister Cornelia, and Palma's
daughter — the Santa Barbara of the glorious picture of Santa Maria Formosa in
Venice—together at Titian's house, where
they met Sansovino, Speronefrom Padua,
Aretino, and Monsignore della Casa from
Florence. It is pleasant to think of them
seated at the table of the grand old
painter, overlooking the lagoon to Murano, to Burano, to Torcello; seeing the
linked line of the Venetian Alps under
the clearer skies of summer, seeing gondolas rapidly darting upon or gliding with
the tide; the silence of the hour broken
by evening bells, or by stringed instruments touched to the sound of delightful
voices.

And it is pleasant to think of

Gaspara Stampa playing on the lute, after fruit and wine, and charming all with

48

GASPARA

her voice.

STAMPA.

Or it may be she was in the

more famous gardens of Navagero at
Murano, with Sansovino, once one of the
handsomest men of his time, now old,
saddened by troubled days, by great rivalries, yet outliving them; prosperous, but
much worn by a most laborious life ; first
architect and sculptor of the Venetian
Republic ; and when in prison and under
public censure, for the accident which befell the roof of his great work — the new
library — bravely delivered by the influence of his fast friends Titian and Aretino.

It is not difficult to know how he

looked, for both Tintoret and

Titian

painted his portrait.
In the Uflzzi Gallery at Florence you
may see his noble and worn face, most
sympathetically painted by the grave Tintoret about the time of which I am speaking.

In a plain black robe, he is seen as

GASPARA

STAMPA.

he was in his old age, his curious and sad
blue eyes looking from under heavy lids.
His hair and beard are white, his nose is
large and fine.

His mouth not rigid, but

flexible and cultivated, yet firm in expression.

It is a face full of the signs of

talent and sensibility, and a certain judiciousness, without which talent and sensibility are apt to land one in the quicksands of life.

Such a face is a solemn

and interesting page of humanity.

Seri-

ous and observant, it was moulded in
sympathy with the great and beautiful
things of Florence, of Rome, of Venice:
Sansovino was, perhaps, the second great
sculptor of the Renaissance.

No work

of his time surpasses his own in nobility
and symmetry, expressive as it is of the
magnificence of Venice. As to his bronzes,
the graceful, the elegant, and the voluptuous went to shape his two statues, —

50

GASPARA

STAMPA.

the Apollo and the Mercury of the Loggia
of St. Marks. Few more interesting men
lived in Venice, and it is much to see
his face as it was after he had well withstood "the wreckful siege of battering
days." Being a true man, and not a mere
actor, he has a face, not a mask.
It is not pleasant to associate the name
of Aretino with Gaspara Stampa's. But
they must have often met each other, not
only in the splendid festivals of life at
Venice, but probably at Collalto's Venetian palace, if not at the castle at San
Salvatore. Aretino corresponded with
Collalto, who, on more than one occasion,
sent him gifts, — at one time, a certain
velvet robe with black damask lappets;
and at another a gold chain, perhaps
the very chain which he wears in Titian's
portrait of him. Aretino's name is commonly coupled with the word "infamous."

GASPARA

STAMPA.

He has left abundant expression of his
impudent mind. He was the great interviewer and reporter or correspondent of
his time, and doubtless would have been
a renowned journalist had he been born
in our day. His effrontery, impudence,
and fulsomenessj above all, his boundless talk, his facile pen, — he wrote no
less than six volumes of letters, — and
his great gastronomical powers, not to
speak more particularly of his appetites,
rendered him one of those living men
who attract others by sheer force of vitality. That he was the familiar friend of
Titian is made a reproach to Titian. But
as he corresponded with the masters of
his time, and was admitted to social intercourse with great churchmen and great
soldiers, and was honored with presents
from the Emperor Charles V., it is probable that he was tolerated, courted, and

52

GASPARA

STAMPA.

propitiated by superior men, chiefly because he was most useful to them, and he
was good company.

His bold and easy

disposition, his unhesitating talent for
using other people, his relations with
great princes, sufficiently account for his
place in Venetian life and the personal
friendship which Titian manifested for
so unscrupulous a man.

Private and

public morality then were not so exacting
as the cultivated sentiment of a sensitive
moralist of our day.

Titian could not

forget the hand that made his fortunes
golden.

And it was natural

that

he

should have clung to Aretino; and I see
no reason why he should not have enjoyed his company at table; for it is not
the company we keep that makes our character, however much it may affect our reputation.

This was illustrated in a certain

place in Galilee many centuries ago.

GASPARA

STAMPA.

53

Thinking of Aretino and his active influence, it was with heightened interest
that I sought his portrait at Florence.
There he is, as Titian painted him in his
most masterly manner, — half-length, the
size of life, in a superb dark wine-colored
robe, turned in broad laps over
broader shoulders.

his

His heavy, flowing,

black beard, shaggy eyebrows, keen, unflinching, pig-like eyes, and great forehead
thinly covered with hair, — a remarkable
and unattractive face, but full of force.
So Titian saw him, painted him, — gross,
sensual, unblushing; something measureless, incontinent, bad, and bold in his
satyr's face, as though flattery and abuse
were the two familiar means of his life;
as though the finest fashioners of clay —
thoughts of love, of pity, of reverence, of
sympathy with the dignity and sweetness
of our nature — h a d never passed over

54

GASPARA

STAMPA.

his sinister face. He was not pleased
with this portrait of himself; and this is
not the good-natured, smiling goat-face
of some of the medals struck in his honor.
But Titian took him here more seriously
than as his boon companion. The thief
on the cross might have had such a
countenance; Judas may have had such
a face; the Wandering Jew may have
first looked at Christ with such a glance.
He called himself the scourge of princes.
Was he a great Democrat, born before
his time ? Like a Democrat he worshipped power j and like a Democrat he
was fickle and corruptible. He was corruption itself. The ascendancy of his
his name was neither due to his learning,
— for he had none, — nor to the elevation
of his mind, — for he was essentially vulgar, — nor to his origin, — for he was of
illegitimate birth. The ascendancy of

GASPARA

STAMP A.

55

his name was due to the fact that he
stopped at nothing; that he had stomach
for everything; and, above all, was a
kind of journal or newspaper incarnate.
He gossipped, informed, threatened, and
flattered the great with unwearied zest,
and interested everybody. What was
redeeming in the fellowship of such a
man ? It was that he had a certain
active, open sense of living interests, and
enjoyed things greatly. He had an eye
for the splendors of Venice, and he even
anticipated Ruskin in a lively and trulyfelt description of what he saw from his
window on the Grand Canal. I should
call him a great forerunner of the modern
man, a colossal sort of Theophile Gautier, dedicated to the life of the senses,
wholly intent on promulgating the doctrines of the world and the flesh. Seeing
his portrait, vital with all the appearance

56

GASPARA

STAMPA.

of life but action, he is to us no ghost of
the great days of Venice.

And one may-

turn from it to imagine him as he was, —
a figure of rank force next to the knightlylooking Collalto; near Titian, serious and
observant; oppbsite to Gaspara Stampa,
looking like a Muse, her pale and impassioned face turned towards Molino the
poet.

These persons were distinguished

company of the day in the gardens of
Venice or of Murano.
Whatever may have limited the lives
of other men and women of other days,
whatever weakening distrust of the primordial forces of human nature may have
locked up the free spirit, or struck with
dumbness the soul that is within them,
or tuned it to the droning monotony of
automatic habit, or harnessed it to the
hacks of life, or hastened it from the
cradle to the grave, without leisure or

GASPARA

STAMPA.

57

chance or taste to cultivate, or even see,
the pasture places of experience, — nothing of this struck the hand with palsy, or
made voiceless the hearts and minds of
these men and women of Venice when
Venice was most magnificent. They
painted the most beautiful pictures, they
printed the most beautiful books, they
gave themselves " to enterprises of great
pith and moment," they were sumptuously
clad, not merely to indulge in things of
great cost, but because they had the sense
and need of beautiful things, and they
valued quality more than quantity. They
were cultivated enough for that. They
had their clubs or academies of learned
and accomplished men, their musical parties, their splendid festivals in the sheltered life of their beautiful city, of their
enchanting islands of the lagoons.
It is to the great families of Venice that

58

GASPARA

STAMPA.

is attributed the foundation of the first gardens in Italy for the cultivation of exotic
plants. Morosini, Cornaro, Justiniani,
Grimani, Benzon, Moncengo, Priuli, and
Navagero had palaces and gardens at
Murano, curiously rich with plants from
Cyprus and Greece, and Spain and India.
It is well to mention these facts here,
for they add to our sense of " the earthly
Paradise," " a place of nymphs and demigods," as it was called, where the
Venetians of the time of which I am
speaking passed some of the most charming days of their life. Of these famous
gardens and orchards nothing remains
to-day but the broken brick-work of
some of their walls, fragments of timeworn sculptured arches, and columns
and capitals; here and there a beautiful
well of white Istrian stone, and a few
lone and scattered cypresses behind great

GASPARA

STAMPA.

palaces in ruin, whitened by the sea
winds and sunlight of centuries, or blackened by the smoke from the furnaces of
the glass-makers. But air, sky, and site
are the same as in the past, or at least
one can say, Under this sky, at this place,
in other days, a splendid and delightful
and cultivated company were in the habit
of meeting together. We know their
names; we know the fortunes of some of
them. Here they came from the public
and private life of Venice. About that
private life, for the most part, is the poetic
mystery of silence. From it no woman
more gifted, more charming, more respected and beloved than Gaspara Stampa
ever came. She was, let me say it again,
like one of Shakespeare's women, tender,
ardent, devoted; not lightly won; once
won, with her, love was not a part but
the whole of existence. Tribute to her

60

GASPARA

STAMPA.

memory is not strange, for she awakens
the most personal sympathy; and the
passionate pilgrim can find no more lovely
martyr. A distinguished and pious Frenchman sought the traces of her life, and expressed his admiration of her in the most
exalted language, calling her a second
queen of the Adriatic; and he was all
but religious in the fervor of his sympathy for her in her unhappiness.

To

her was given the perilous gift of love.
Queen, saint, or martyr, love at her age
is an ecstasy "of imagination all compact,"
of most delicate sense, swift for its satisfaction, and spurning the whole of life
without it.

Something of the music of

its voice, the joy of it, the sorrow of it,
the sweet and bitter of it, the sonnets of
Gaspara Stampa may perhaps give to us
anew.

SOME OF

GASPARA

STAMPA'S

SONNETS.

NOTE OF T H E

TRANSLATOR.

THAT several of these Sonnets are somewhat
roughly set, that in many cases their English
form is lacking in melody, and that I have repeatedly been forced to make use of assonants
in place of rhyme, the most careless reader will
hardly fail to observe.
I can only answer that my chief care in making these translations has been to transcribe the
original poems with all fidelity. "Wherever, —
as must often be the case in any rhymed translation of the involved and formal Italian of the
sixteenth century, — wherever there has been a
choice between the more literal reproduction of
the author's expression, as I understand it, and
a more graceful use of English idiom, I have
thought it best to sacrifice the latter.

I.
SHE DESIRES NOT PITY BUT ADMIRATION
FOR THE CAUSE OF HER SORROW.
FROM those who hearken to this saddened rhyme,
Unto this saddened, this obscure lament,
Wherein the sobbing of my grief is spent
For this, the greatest sorrow of my time;
From well-born folk, whatever be their clime,
I crave not pity for my long torment,
But glory rather: tho' my heart be rent,
The cause of all my weeping is sublime.
I hope some woman yet may live to sigh,
" Oh, happiest she whose portion was to bear
Such noble sorrow to such noble end I
Ah, that this love, this fortune, came my way !
Pd bravely show myself this woman''s peer
Only to have such noble Lord to friend! "

SONNETS.

66

II.

SHE DESCRIBES H E R LOVER.

A N intellect angelic and divine ;
A princely nature; brave and very true ;
A noble craving for ambition's due;
Deliberate speech, — precious, and slow, and fine;
Blood equal to the loftiest kingly line ;
A fortune far above the common view;
A youth in flower, of very perfect hue ;
A bearing honest, simple, and benign;
A face to far outshine the shining sun; —
Out of all these behold ! what Love hath wrought,
— Chains tempered as were never chains before.
Oh, gracious Love ! I pray thee hark to one
Who 'gainst these sweet, these honoured, chains
has fought;
I pray thee bid them bind me evermore.

SONNETS.

6?

III.
IN WHICH SHE CONTRASTS HER PERSON
WITH THAT OF HER LOVER.
WOMEN, who crave to know my Lord's dear face
Behold some cavalier of presence fair,
Young in his years but old in wisdom's share,
The glorious image of a valorous race.
A fair-haired Lord, whose colour men may praise ;
Broad-breasted, goodly, tall and debonair;
Save that he somewhat doubts of love so rare
The sum and summit of perfection's ways.
And who would know me, let him gaze upon
Some woman, image of a living death,
And of long martyrdom which no man saith;
The home of faith; loyal and yet undone;
Of her who weepeth, drawing cruel breath,
Yet pity may not win from the beloved one.

68

SONNETS.

IV.
SHE IS SPEECHLESS I N T H E PRESENCE O F LOVE.
W H E N , for that rare good fortune which is mine,
I stand before those eyes, so fair and bright,
Style, language, meaning, everything takes flight !•
Conceits and feelings, all I am in fine,
I find oppressed or I find all spent.
Half stupid then am I, or else half dumb ;
By reverence perchance I 'm overcome,
Perchance upon those eyes I am intent.
Enough that no word can I e'er express
Before that fatal and divinest face
Which steals my soul and steals my strength
away.
Oh, miracle of Love ! and oh, rare play!
That one sole cause, one piece of loveliness,
Should give me life and take intelligence.

SONNETS.

V.
SHE REJOICES IN HER LOVE.

W H O could relate the bliss which lives in me,
My lofty joy, or my high-born delight, —
One of those blessed angels robed in white ?
Or some glad lover from fond memory ?
At my Lord's side I evermore may be,
Basking within the radiance of his sight,
Instinct with knowledge and divinely right,
I live upon his lofty imagery.
And oftener yet I gaze into his eyes,
And, gazing there, methinks I do behold
The glory and the good of Paradise.
One only fear can make my hope grow cold,
One fatal dread that still within me lies —
Would he were mine till my last hour to hold!

69

7o

SONNETS.

VI.
ON T H E LESSONS OF LOVE.

Now if to suffer grief is to be strong,
(And to be strong is beautiful and rare;)
'T was in thy court, O Love ! I learned it there,
I learned this lesson of enduring long.
There 's not a man who dwells thy courts among
Who shall not learn the thousand ways of grief,
Or how each flatt'ring gleam of poor relief
Evokes wild fears and shades in dark'ning throng.
There too a man may learn how to forego
The crowned summit of his heart's desire
When reverence for another wills it so.
These virtues, yea and others, Love to laud,
Under Love's lordship have I learned to know
And from my sweet and unbelieving Lord.

SONNETS.

7i

VII.

SHE ADMONISHES H E R LOVER.

Go then, my Lord, and with a happy heart,
To where desire is calling on your name,
Bidding you send to heaven your winged fame
Safe from oblivion and from death's own dart.
Remember, ay, remember as we part,
You leave me like some solitary dove
Who by the clearest stream yet mourns her love
And flies each verdant tree to dwell apart.
To mine own heart keep trusty company,
Nor give your pledged life to other hands,
Since it to me was promised faithfully.
When then you turn you homeward from far lands
If so it chanceth that I dead should lie
I charge you, think! Who was more true than I ?

72

SONNETS.

VIIL

TO VENICE.

INVIOLATE shores I loved so warmly well!
Shores more than others beautiful and blest!
Of an illustrious race the tranquil nest;
Of our dear liberties the faithful cell.
Who will believe what I scarce dare to tell ?
Your very worth has vanished like the rest
From out my heart.

Alas ! I am possest

With sorry grief to think I here must dwell
Now that my thoughts, my hopes, and my desire
Do ever turn them to that lovely.hill
Where lives my Lord, — he of the haughty eyes.
Only to quiet once this wish of fire,
How I would spend for him, nor think it ill,
Whatever of sad life before me lies!

SONNETS,

73

IX.
S H E ENTREATS H E R LOVER TO
WRITE.
Y E happy days of France, for that ye know
The light of his dear eyes, in courtesy,
I pray you listen to my piteous cry.
Bright, blessed days ! oh, hearken as ye go!
Say to my Lord with saddened speech and slow
That, if he come not, let him write to me,
Let him write soon, I pray beseechingly,
Lest death untimely put an end to woe.
For, in his absence growing overbold,
My many sorrows do that height attain
Where fear or thought of death make all my care.
And if it chanceth that his heart be cold
To these sad voices of my extreme pain
I have no shield to save me from despair.

74

SONNETS.

X.
S H E ENTREATS NATURE TO PLEAD
FOR H E R W I T H H E R LOVER.
DEAR lovely hills and joyous country round ;
Green fields; deep woods; and grassy river-shore;
And clasping valley where he dwells once more
He who can make my days with joy abound ;
Deep amorous haunts ; and cool and shady ground
Where never shaft of sunshine may be seen ;
Sweet birds; clear floods; and winds of Summer
green;
Ye fairest Nymphs; and Pan; and old Silenus
crowned;
— O give him back — give back my Lord again
Ye who can keep him ! — or at least make clear
My harshest grief and all my cruel pain.
Tell him the sunset of my life draws near,
If, or few days be passed, few hours be passed in
vain
His light shines not upon me : light so dear!

SONNETS,

75

XI.
TO THE BROTHER OF HER LOVER.
MY Lord, since this great rainfall of my tears
Which I have shed both heavily and long,
To move your brother's heart has not proved
strong,
— That heart, which hard unriven rock appears!
I beg that you, for whom he greatly cares,
Should write him humbly some poor half-a-page,
That thus perchance you may have advantage
To vanquish that unyielding pride he bears.
Illustrious Vinciquerra! I but want
That he should write to me in one short screed
" For my return still suffer', hope, and wait I"
And should this happen, like some starving plant
New-set beside a stream whereon to feed,
You quick shall see my scattered wits wax great.

76

SONNETS.

XII.

TO LEONARDO EMO, A VENETIA]
GENTLEMAN.
BEYOND all other women, to that space
Wherein the Suns are born and whence depart,
My spirit now may soar, since by thy art,
Emo! my name is writ, and polished by thy grace.
Achilles, chief among Mars' warlike race
Claimed Honour's fairest spoil for his desert,
Not altogether that it was his part
But because Homer raised him to that place.
In me is naught save love and deep desire
To drink that water of clear Castaly
Which thou well knowest and I do not know.
If this brave wish of mine some day draw nigher,
And if Apollo's spirit dwell in me,
Singing that fountain's praise and thine I '11 go !

SONNETS.

77

XIII.

MADRIGAL.

I F I might hope, dying, to put an end,
To all this weary martyrdom of grief,
I 'd die. One single death were then my friend,
For brief death slays not,—rather brings relief.
Alas alas! what tho' I die, I fear
Love's torment would but grow and wax more
strong,
As I should know, who here
Have died and died yet felt desire prolong.
And thus for less torment
To live, to suffer, I must give consent.

7%

SONNETS.

XIV.

MADRIGAL.
T H E pangs of hell itself were light
Next to this fire which burns and burns in me !
Nay, hell itself were nothing in my sight;
For, when there is no place for hope to be,
The resolute soul, knowing 't will suffer long,
Before such changeless ill is strong.
But mine is greater woe,
Because I sometimes taste the shade of bliss
And see hope come and go;
And all the chance of this,
This shifting joy and pain,
But make my martyrdom of heavier strain.

SONNETS.

79

XV.
ON SEEING H E R LOVER AFTER LONG
ABSENCE.
BACK to the midst of that tumultuous sea
Where, for three years, my patient way I fought
'Gainst baffling winds, — when just in sight of
port, —
The cruel hand of Love is leading me.
And that my winged desires should doubled be
Such radiant light my dazzled gaze has caught
That as I look, lo ! travail groweth naught
And my pale fear is vanished utterly.
Behold! a new fire like that other fire !
And if in such brief time this come to pass
Shall not this last fire make the hotter blaze ?
And must it be that of my own desire
I tread again that fatal way ? Alas !
I go from evil unto evil days.

8o

SONNETS.

XVI.

ON SEEING AGAIN T H E EYES O F
H E R LOVER.
I BLESS, O Love, I bless all bygone fears,
And all the injuries and weary days,
All the new griefs, and all the older ways
Which thou hast made me tread so many years.
I bless each fraud tho' bitter fruit it bears,
As thy fond followers, alas ! must learn ;
Since those two friendly stars begin to burn
And in an instant sorrow disappears.
Now in their splendid and returning light,
In which alone my deep desire finds rest,
I bid past evil vanish into night.
I follow those sure guides at whose behest
I may climb upward to God's very height
To contemplate the beautiful and best.

SONNETS.

8l

XVII.

SHE QUESTIONS W H A T COMFORT IS
L E F T TO HER.
W H O then shall bring me comfort ? yea, and how
Shall death approach from life to set me free,
After that too too cruel loss of thee,
At which my heart is trembling even now ?
Not mother and not sister may I know
Lest pity bid them make their moan with me;
I, in that extreme hour, must lonely be ;
Pity becomes not my most haughty woe.
And thus your trusty friendship vanished,
I lose what little solace I might find,
When you from that proud court are banished.
And in the grave I now must lie reclined,
Knowing no comfort, save that I be dead,
Calling upon your names with sighs like wind.

82

SONNETS.

XVIII.
SHE BEMOANS THE RUIN OF LOVE, BUT
MAY NOT DECLARE THE REASON.
W H O would believe it ? / w a s happy here,
Where, turn by turn, now grief, now dear delight,
Or fear, oppressed my heart, or hope was bright,
And heaven now was clouded, now was clear.
To see the flowery meads of Love appear,
In all their glory, in my judgment's sight
Requires th' admixture of contentious might,
When sad displeasure maketh bliss more dear;
But now so full of sorry thorns they show,
And harshest briars, no fair flowers are there,
Where only poisonous serpents hiss and dwell.
Oh, faith forsworn ! oh, my dear hopes laid low
By envious fortune 1 all their roots laid bare !
I know why this thing is, but may not tell.

SONNETS.

83

XIX.

A PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE.
PURGE thou, O God, this inmost heart of mine,
And let me solely fix my gaze on thee,
Thine may my love and thine my wishes be !
Eternal Object, glorious, true, divine.
Take from my breast, by that dear grace of thine,
All other longings, all vain fantasy,
And all love's many cares; for ceaselessly
Sighs ever followed that vain joy of mine.
The beauty that I love is of the best
Thou hast created j being yet terrene
It may not of thy kingdom's be the peer.
A straight and upward path thou beckonest
To me to follow, whither none need fear
To change or mar th' eternal life serene.

84

SONNETS.

XX.

SHE DICTATES H E R OWN E P I T A P H .

WEEP, O ye women!

Set Love weeping too,

For that he weeps not, he that wounded me;
Soon shall my weary soul departed be
From this tormented body which he knew.
And if some gentle charity would do
Aught to fulfil a last request of mine,
When I am lying dead within the shrine
Write this sad history of my grief in view.

" Because she loved much and was little loved,
She lived and died in pain: she rests in peace,
Most faithful lover that was ever proved.
Pray, passer-by, for her repose and ease.
Learn her life's lesson: how a heart unmoved,
A fickle heart, to love she could not cease."

SONNETS.

85

XXI.

DE PROFUNDIS.
SAD for past error, and repenting me —
For that my dreams were idle, now I know,
And that I, wasteful, let my brief years go,
Squand'ring swift life on Love's vain fantasy; —
To thee, O God, who dealest tenderly
Unto men's souls, — making the congealed snow
Melt and wax warm, — and harsh weights lighter
grow
For all who burn with holy fire for thee ; —
To thee, O God, I turn me now and pray
That thou would'st draw me from this deep abyss,
From which I may not, by myself, win free.
Thou who didst ransom humankind that day,
Thou who wast ready once to die for us,
O dear Lord God! do not abandon me !