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places we can only reply,
'Yes, but
listen'. Of course it is
commonplace to tell your mistress that she is young and now's the time
for love: but he says, 'Now whilst thy May hath fill'd thy lap with
flowers'. Of course it is commonplace to say that she is virtuous as
well as young: but Daniel says she is a maid
deck'd with a blush of honour
Whose feet do treade green pathes of youth and loue.
Any man may complain that
he
grows old; but Daniel says
My cares draw on mine
everlasting night
and builds out of it a
hyperbole
which leaves us not astonished (as the
metaphysical hyperboles do) but bowed down before the magnanimity of
the attitude it implies. In him, as in Shakespeare, the most ordinary
statement turns liquid and delicious;
Still in the trace of one
perplexed thought
My ceasles cares continually run on,
or
Shalt bend thy wrinkles
homeward
to the earth.
The truth is that while
everything
Daniel says would be commonplace in
a prose abstract, nothing is commonplace as it actually occurs in the
poetry. In that medium all the Petrarchan gestures become compulsive
invitations to enormous sorrows and delights. And it really matters
very little that he is so heavily indebted to Desportes. A poetic
translation is always to some extent a new work of art. In the large,
objective kinds, in epic or tragedy, the degree of novelty is limited,
because situation, characters, and architectonics are common to both
handlings. But in so small a poem as a sonnet a seemingly trivial
change may alter an image, or an implied image, in such a way as to
alter the lighting of the whole piece. Thus Desportes writes:
La beaut- qui, si
douce, -
pr-sent vous inspire,
C-dant aux lois du Tans, ses faveurs reprendra;
L'hyver de vostre teint les fleurettes perdra,
Et ne laissera rien des thresors que j'admire.
Cest orgueil desdaigneux qui vous fait ne m'aimer,
En regret et chagrin se verra transformer,
Avec le changement d'une image si belle . . .
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