Sonnet VIII
I live, I burn, I drown and I die
I endure at once chill and cold;
Life is too hard and too soft to hold;
I am joyful and sad, don’t ask me why.
Suddenly I laugh and a the same time cry
And as I’m happy I must endure grief,
It lasts forever and goes like a thief,
Suddenly I bloom and vanish into sigh.
Thus I suffer Amors’ inconstancy
And when I think I am in great pain,
Without thinking, it is gone again.
Then when my joy is a certainty
And my longing for love is not in vain,
I am in pain all over once again.
Sonnet XIV
While I have tears that start into my eyes,
At memories of joys that we have known
And while my voice, still master of its own,
Is not yet choked with sobbing and with sighs.
While still my hand has cunning to devise,
A lover’s cadence to the lute’s soft tone
And while in understanding you alone,
I no more wisdom need to make me wise.
How could I want, as yet, that I were dead?
And when these eyes have no more tears to shed,
My voice is hoarse and my hands lost their art.
When no longer can my tormented heart
Declare itself in love, then I will pray
For Death to blacken out my brightest day.
Sonnet XXIII
What good is it to me that once you praised
The golden splendour of my plaited hair,
Or that to two bright Suns you would compare
The beauty of my eyes, from which Love gazed
And shot the cruel darts so expertly?
Where are you now, tears that so quickly dried?
Or death, which was to prove you would abide
By oath of love and solemn loyalty?
Or did you seek from malice to delude,
Slavery by pretending servitude?
Forgive the thought, this once, my dearest one,
When grief and anger fiercely combine;
I know, wherever you may have gone,
Your martyrdom is as harsh as mine.
While Yet These Tears
While yet these tears have power to flow
For hours for ever past away;
While yet these swelling sighs allow
My faltering voice to breathe a lay;
While yet my hand can touch the chords,
My tender lute, to wake thy tone;
While yet my mind no thought affords,
But one remembered dream alone,
I ask not death, whate’er my state:
But when my eyes can weep no more,
My voice is lost, my hand untrue.
And when my spirit’s fire is o’er,
Nor can express the love it knew,
Come, Death, and cast thy shadows o’er my fate!
- Louise Labé
