Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
  When all must die?  Nay, death beyond belief
  Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
  Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!

  Therefore, because I cannot shun the blow
  I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
  Gliding between her gladness and her woe?

  If only chains and bands can make me blest,
  No marvel if alone and bare I go,
  An armed KNIGHT’S captive and slave confessed.

“The other shall be what follows, written perhaps for the same person, and worthy, in my opinion, not only of the ripest sage, but also of a poet not unexercised in writing verse:—­

  With your fair eyes a charming light I see,
  For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain;
  Stayed by your feet, the burden I sustain
  Which my lame feet find all too strong for me;

  Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly;
  Heavenward your sprit stirreth me to strain;
  E’en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
  Freeze in the sun, burn ’neath a frosty sky.

  Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
  Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
  My words begin to breathe upon your breath: 
  Like to the-moon am I, that cannot shine
  Alone; for, lo! our eyes see naught in heaven
  Save what the living sun illumineth.”

The frank and hearty feeling for a youth of singular distinction which is expressed in these sonnets, gave no offence to society during the period of the earlier Renaissance; but after the Tridentine Council social feeling altered upon this and similar topics.  While morals remained what they had been, language and manners grew more nice and hypocritical.  It happened thus that grievous wrong was done to the text of Michelangelo’s poems, with the best intentions, by their first editor.  Grotesque misconceptions, fostered by the same mistaken zeal, are still widely prevalent.

When Michelangelo the younger arranged his grand-uncle’s poems for the press, he was perplexed by the first of the sonnets quoted by Varchi.  The last line, which runs in the Italian thus—­

  Resto prigion d’un Cavalier armato,

has an obvious play of words upon Cavalieri’s surname.  This he altered into

  Resto prigion d’un cor di virtu armato.

The reason was that, if it stood unaltered, “the ignorance of men would have occasion to murmur.”  “Varchi,” he adds, “did wrong in printing it according to the text.”  “Remember well,” he observes, “that this sonnet, as well as the preceding number and some others, are concerned, as is manifest, with a masculine love of the Platonic species.”  Michelangelo the younger’s anxiety for his granduncle’s memory induced him thus to corrupt the text of his poems.  The same anxiety has led their latest editor to explain away the obvious sense of certain words.  Signor Guasti approves of the first editor’s