XXXIII.
After this canzone was devised, there came to me one who, according to the degrees of friendship, was my friend next in order after the first; and he was so near in blood to this lady in glory that there was none nearer. And after talking with me, he prayed me to write for him something on a lady who was dead; and he dissembled his words, so that it might seem that he was speaking of another lady who had lately died; but I, aware that he spake only of that blessed one, told him I would do that which his prayer begged of me. Wherefore, after thinking thereupon, I resolved to make a sonnet in which I would somewhat bewail myself, and to give it to this my friend, that it might seem that I had made it for him; and I devised then this sonnet which begins: “To hearken now,” etc.
This sonnet has two parts: in the first, I call upon the liegemen of Love to hearken to me; in the second, I describe my wretched condition. The second begins here: “Sighs which their way.”
To hearken now unto my sighs come ye,
O gentle hearts! for pity wills it so; —
Sighs, which their way disconsolately go,
And were they not, I dead of grief should be:
Because my eyes would debtors be to me
For vastly more than they could every pay, —
To weep, alas! my lady in such way,
That, weeping her, my heart relieved might be.
Oft you shall hear them calling unto her,
My gentle lady, who from us is gone
Unto the world deserving of her worth;
And then, in scorn of this life, making moan,
As though the grieving soul itself they were,
Abandoned by its welfare upon earth.