MENTRE M’ ATTRISTA

    Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer
      In thinking of the past, when I recall
      My weakness and my sins and reckon all
    The vain expense of days that disappear: 
    This cheers by making, ere I die, more clear
      The frailty of what men delight miscall;
      But saddens me to think how rarely fall
    God’s grace and mercies in life’s latest year.

    For though Thy promises our faith compel,
      Yet, Lord, what man shall venture to maintain
      That pity will condone our long neglect? 
    Still, from Thy blood poured forth we know full well
      How without measure was Thy martyr’s pain,
      How measureless the gifts we dare expect.

From the thought of Dante, through Plato, to the thought of Christ:  so our study of Michael Angelo’s sonnets has carried us.  In communion with these highest souls Michael Angelo habitually lived; for he was born of their lineage, and was like them a lifelong alien on the earth.

FOOTNOTES: 

[412] See Guasti’s Rime di Michel Agnolo Buonarrote, Firenzi, 1863, p. 189.  The future references will be made to that edition.

[413] “I can translate, and have translated, two books of Ariosto at the rate nearly of one hundred lines a day; but so much meaning has been put by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him insurmountable.”—­Note to Wordsworth’s English version of some sonnets of Michael Angelo.

[414] See above, Chapter VIII, The Pieta.

[415] See Gotti’s Life, p. 48, and Giannotti’s works (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1850), quoted by Gotti, pp. 249-257.

[416] See Appendix to Gotti’s Life, No. 25.

[417] See Gotti’s Life, p. 256.

[418] Guasti, pp. 153-155.

[419] Guasti, pp. 156, 167.

[420] Guasti, p. 158.

[421] See above, Chapter VIII, Vittoria Colonna.

[422] Guasti, p. 226.

[423] Guasti, p. 218.

[424] Ib. pp. 182, 210.

[425] Guasti, p. 212.

[426] Delivered before the Florentine Academy in 1546.  See Guasti, p. 173, for the sonnet, and p. lxxv. for the dissertation.  See also Gotti, p. 249, for Michael Angelo’s remarks upon the latter.

[427] Guasti, pp. 189, 188.

[428] See Archivio Buonarroti; and above, p. 318, note 2.

[429] Rime, p. xlv.

[430] Gotti’s Life, pp. 231-233.

[431] Guasti, pp. 190-202.

[432] Ib. p. 162.

[433] Guasti, p. 205.

[434] Guasti, pp. 230-232.

[435] Guasti, pp. 244, 245.

[436] Ib. pp. 241-245.

[437] Guasti, p. 246.

APPENDIX III