Francisco de Quevedo Three Love Sonnets & other poems translated from the Spanish by Michael Smith

Sonnet I

Symmetry could never be the craftsman
of this beauty I see in Floralba;
and this artifact that mocks the sun
and day, is no victory of numbers.

Nor – with apologies to Orpheus –
from musical harmony did it come;
for my desire perceives in it
the veiled majesty of heaven.

It can be sensed but never known,
it can be envied, not defined: a soul
visible only when it stirs.

One cannot find in deathlike calm
that beauty which is fire in motion,
nor can it rest while yet it lives.

 

Sonnet II

Allow me vent the good I lose
although my grief stirs you to pity.
Let me be mad, for I can ill support
the role of sane man and of lover.

The net I break and bond I bite,
tyrannic cruelty I adore and feel,
do not suffice to show my hurt
if to my grief I muse on who I was.

Listen all: grant that I,
sick of hopes and moans, die insane
since unrequited I have lived.

To spend myself in shrieks is my one wish;
so at least this sphinx shall know
that I would sooner die than change.

Sonnet III

My only wish is to attend,
learn courtesy and be a lover;
I shun desires, and strive,
constant by unsoliciting, to love.

Nor, wantonly, do I offend
the deities of poise and grace;
sight alone would not suffice
if reason, too, did not attend.

Your features claim my eyes,
but it was absolutes of virtues
and high gifts that captured them.

Time shall not witness my love's end;
on my pure yearnings
eternity bestowed its emblem.

 

---

The Hour-Glass

What say you, troublesome hour-glass,
in a breath of wretched life
that passes by so fast?
On a road that's but a brief
and straitened trip from this
to the other pole, a trip
that's but a single step?
Although a vessel big
enough to hold the sands
where the ocean halts its step,
you would not still be equal
to all my griefs and pains.
Let the hours pass unfelt
for I have no desire to count
nor wish that you inform me
of death's inevitable terms.
Don't cause me any trouble
but let me be and earn
yourself a name for mercy;
for there is time enough
for me to sleep beneath
the earth.

        But if your care
is to count out my life,
then soon you'll have your rest;
for all ill-affecting cares
that the sad and anxious heart
tearfully sustains,
and the daring flame that love,
alas, burns in my veins
(less full of blood that fire),
not only hasten death
but shorten, too, my road.
For with a grieving step,
a wretched pilgrim, I circle
the black tomb.
Well I know that I'm
no more that fleeting breath.
I know, I fear, and also
wait, since I'll be dust when dead, and glass
like you when I'm alive.

 

 

The Comet

No blame's attached to any comet
nor is there sign of an ill omen.
Envy suffices for the favourite
and for the King extreme worry
that they both may die in sorrow.

Heaven's constellations do
but rarely pay the slightest heed
to affairs of state below.
Every emperor passes on
simply because he once was born.

Many disasters I have seen
without attendant omens, planets,
and prophets lost without their stars.
Kings die without the aid of comets
as tailors do despite their help.

The princes of the world believe
that they are alien to this clay;
but they forget that almost every
year the sky miscarries
comets through their patches.

King, to your servile life it seems
the comet that can proudly boast
the finest tail, is that disorder
which inaugurates the ill
the doctor brings to a conclusion.

 

Clock

The animated metal on which
a hand of daring skill,
eager to endow the learned
motion with resounding voice,
secretly bestowed
seeming life within a prized machine;
wherein an unknown hidden spirit,
circled by a tiny ring,
displays the route of burning light
and with importunate wheel
the toils of sun and moon
and wanderings of the hours
between the rise and set of sun.
The craftsman who could computate
the move of sun and stage of day
revealed more foresight that courage,
contriving in metallic guise
warnings of recurrent noise
often summed though seldom heard.
You who are so proud
to have the surest keenest
sense of hearing, most discerning,
now listen to its sound and will.
Lament the inevitable hour that struck.
Anticipate the next to strike.
Achieve the present one you hear.
For it is that which marks
your thriving and farewell.
If you should have the means
to have a clock in your possession,
be prudent and attend,
for in unlocks the boasts of age.
A spy, quick and gallant,
harbours in a clock's appearance
your greatest enemy's spy
so like yourself who dares
presume to shorten the sun's
swift life, the sky's race,
and bases all that wonderful
machine upon a weak and ticklish coil
whose wheels and hand wear out
as health in those are stoutest built.

Esteem its memories and fear
its disillusionments,
for its converts the years to terms,
and secretly, with every fleeting day,
with every single ray,
death gives you an accountant,
and time a minder.

 

 

The Sundial

Can't you see, Floro, how
arithmetic, lending its numbers
to learned geometry,
counts out for days the steps of light?
Can't you see the sun's fleetest
beauty accurately sighted
by that line securely fixed
to the meridian and the height?
Does thoughtful gratitude fill you
to know how long you live,
for the light and hours received?
But if with idle thought you should
forget to know how far you die,
you show yourself ungrateful
to your living and your dying.
For if you mind the dial's teaching,
your keeps pace by its light.
Let not the hours be reckoned
by its lines alone, but let
them have achievement in your mind.
In the sundial you can see
a reminder of how your life
portrays your death, when you are
but shade, as holy truth so names,
trace your path from one number
to the next, and are awaited,
traveller, by the last, a shade.

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