A sad and wandering shade, I next recall,
    Through many a distant and deserted glen,
    That long I mourn’d my indissoluble thrall. 
    At length my malady seem’d ended, when
    I to my earthly frame return’d again,
    Haply but greater grief therein to feel;
    Still following my desire with such fond zeal
    That once (beneath the proud sun’s fiercest blaze,
    Returning from the chase, as was my wont)
    Naked, where gush’d a font,
    My fair and fatal tyrant met my gaze;
    I whom nought else could pleasure, paused to look,
    While, touch’d with shame as natural as intense,
    Herself to hide or punish my offence,
    She o’er my face the crystal waters shook
    —­I still speak true, though truth may seem a lie—­
    Instantly from my proper person torn,
    A solitary stag, I felt me borne
    In winged terrors the dark forest through,
    As still of my own dogs the rushing storm I flew
    My song!  I never was that cloud of gold
    Which once descended in such precious rain,
    Easing awhile with bliss Jove’s amorous pain;
    I was a flame, kindled by one bright eye,
    I was the bird which gladly soar’d on high,
    Exalting her whose praise in song I wake;
    Nor, for new fancies, knew I to forsake
    My first fond laurel, ’neath whose welcome shade
    Ever from my firm heart all meaner pleasures fade.

    MACGREGOR.

SONNET XX.

Se l’ onorata fronde, che prescrive.

TO STRAMAZZO OF PERUGIA, WHO INVITED HIM TO WRITE POETRY.

      If the world-honour’d leaf, whose green defies
    The wrath of Heaven when thunders mighty Jove,
    Had not to me prohibited the crown
    Which wreathes of wont the gifted poet’s brow,
    I were a friend of these your idols too,
    Whom our vile age so shamelessly ignores: 
    But that sore insult keeps me now aloof
    From the first patron of the olive bough: 
    For Ethiop earth beneath its tropic sun
    Ne’er burn’d with such fierce heat, as I with rage
    At losing thing so comely and beloved. 
    Resort then to some calmer fuller fount,
    For of all moisture mine is drain’d and dry,
    Save that which falleth from mine eyes in tears.

    MACGREGOR.

SONNET XXI.

Amor piangeva, ed io con lui talvolta.

HE CONGRATULATES BOCCACCIO ON HIS RETURN TO THE RIGHT PATH.

      Love grieved, and I with him at times, to see
    By what strange practices and cunning art,
    You still continued from his fetters free,
    From whom my feet were never far apart. 
    Since to the right way brought by God’s decree,
    Lifting my hands to heaven with pious heart,
    I thank Him for his love and