Deh, porgi manò a l’affannat’ ingegno
Amor et a lo stile e stanco e frale
Per dir di quella che è fatt’ immortale
Et cittadina del celeste regno
Dammi, signor, che’l mio dir giung’al segno
De le sue lode ove per sè non sale;
Se vertù, se beltà non hebb’eguale
Il mondo, che d’haver lei non fu degno.
Responde: quanto’l ciel et io possiamo
E i buon’ consigli e’l conversar onesto
Tutto fu in lei, di che noi mort’ha privi.
Forma par non fu mai dal dí ch'Adamo
aperse li occhi in prima; et basti or questo:
Piangendo’l dico et tu piangendo’l scrivi.
Canzoniera 354
English translation
Love, give your help to my troubled mind,
and my labouring and feeble pen,
to speak of her who is made immortal,
a citizen of the heavenly kingdom:
grant me, my lord, with my speech to hit
the target in praising her, as it could not alone,
since there’s no virtue or beauty in the world
that she is not worthy of possessing.
He replies: ‘Whatever heaven and I can give,
and good counsel and honest converse,
was all in her, whom death deprived us of.
No form was equal to hers since the day Adam
first opened his eyes: and now let this be enough:
I say it weeping, and weeping you must write.’