Sonnet 333 (translated by Morris Bishop)

Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone
Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear,
And cry to her to speak from heaven's sphere.
Her mortal part with grass is overgrown.

Tell her, I'm sick of living; that I'm blown
By winds of grief from the course I ought to steer,
That praise of her is all my purpose here
And all my business; that of her alone

Do I go telling, that how she lived and died
And lives again in immortality,
All men may know, and love my Laura's grace.

Oh, may she deign to stand at my bedside
When I come to die; and may she call to me
And draw me to her in the blessèd place!



© Copyright 2001 Laura E. Bontrager

Sonnet 333

Go, O weeping rock of mine, to the earth,
To the dust where our love leaps from the grave
And forms are not unmade by lyric lines
Nor fashioned of ivory and mimic.

Tell God I follow soon after the last
Days break free of chained sky and unfurl scrolls;
That I stood well beside your bed here
In the far removed time of my today.

That I push you on to grace and blessed rest
Where exile and Italy have no hold,
But where the glory of His Holiness

Outshines my old Petrarch's graceful poems
And removes all stray throughts of forbidden
Love, while Laura pens her sonnets graceless.