Sonnet XXXIII
SONNET XXXIII.
Valle che d' lamenti miei se' piena.
ON HIS RETURN TO VAUCLUSE AFTER LAURA'S DEATH.
Valley, which long hast echoed with my cries;Stream, which my flowing tears have often fed;Beasts, fluttering birds, and ye who in the bedOf Cabrieres' wave display your speckled dyes;Air, hush'd to rest and soften'd by my sighs;Dear path, whose mazes lone and sad I tread;Hill of delight—though now delight is fled—To rove whose haunts Love still my foot decoys;[Pg 261]Well I retain your old unchanging face!Myself how changed! in whom, for joy's light throng,Infinite woes their constant mansion find!Here bloom'd my bliss: and I your tracks retrace,To mark whence upward to her heaven she sprung,Leaving her beauteous spoil, her robe of flesh behind! Wrangham. Ye vales, made vocal by my plaintive lay;Ye streams, embitter'd with the tears of love;Ye tenants of the sweet melodious grove;Ye tribes that in the grass fringed streamlet play;Ye tepid gales, to which my sighs conveyA softer warmth; ye flowery plains, that moveReflection sad; ye hills, where yet I rove,Since Laura there first taught my steps to stray;—You, you are still the same! How changed, alas,Am I! who, from a state of life so blest,Am now the gloomy dwelling-place of woe!'Twas here I saw my love: here still I traceHer parting steps, when she her mortal vestCast to the earth, and left these scenes below.
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