Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo

Just as in pen and ink
there is a high, low, and medium style,
and in marble are images rich and vile,
according to the art with which we fashion it,
so, my dear lord, in your heart,
along with pride, are perhaps some humble thoughts:
but I draw thence only what is proper for myself
in accordance with what my features show.
Who sows sighs, tears and lamentations
  (dew from heaven on earth, pure and simple,
converts itself differently to varied seeds)
will reap and gather tears and sorrow;
he who gazes upon exalted beauty with such pain
will have doubtful hopes and bitter, certain sorrows.

 To what purpose do I express my intense desire
 with tears and sorrowful words
 when heaven, which clothes my soul,
 neither sooner or later relieves me of it?
 To what purpose does my weary heart long to die,
 when all must die? So to these
 eyes my last hour will be less painful,
 all my joy being less than all my pains.
 If I cannot avoid the blow,
 even seek them; since it is destined,
 who will stand between sweetness and sorrow?
 If I must be conquered in order to be happy,
 no wonder then that I, unarmed and alone,
 remain the prisoner of an armed Cavalier?

 I see through your lovely eyes a sweet light
 which through my blind ones I yet cannot see;
 I carry with your feet a burden
 which with my lame ones I cannot;

 I fly with your wings, having none of my own;
 with your spirit toward heaven I am always moving;
 by your will I turn pale or blush,
 cold in the sun, warm in the coldest weather.

 Within your will alone is my will,
 my thoughts within your bosom are born,
 in your breath are my words.

 I am like the moon, alone,
 which our eyes cannot see in the heavens
 except that it is illumined by the sun.

 You know that I know, my lord, that you know
 I have come to take pleasure in your presence;
 and you know that I know that you know I am constant.
 Why then do we hesitate to greet one another?
 If it is true, this hope that you give me,
 if these desires are true which come over me,
 break down the wall between one and the other;
 hidden sorrows have twice the force.
 If I love only in you, my dear lord,
 that which you love most, do not be angry;
 let love spring up between our two souls.
 That which in your noble face I seek
 is but ill-understood by humankind,
 and he who wishes to see it must first die.

 Give back to my eyes, o fountains and rivers,
 the waves of powerful currents that are not yours,
 which swell you and surge with such force
 than was ever in your nature.

 And you, dense air, heaven's light
 obscuring from my sad eyes, full of sighs,
 give them back to my weary heart, and lighten
 your dark features to my sight.

 Let the earth return to me the traces of my steps,
 that the grass may grow where it was crushed;
 give back the sounds, Echo, yet deaf to my laments;

 their glances back to my eyes, you blessed pupils,
 that I may sometime love some other beauty
 since with me you are not satisfied.

 If there is a chaste love, a heavenly pity,
 an equal fortune between two lovers,
 a bitter fate shared by both,
 and if a single spirit and one will governs two hearts;
 if one soul in two bodies is made eternal,
 raising both to heaven on the same wings;
 if love with one blow and one golden arrow
 can burn and pierce two hearts to the core;
 if each loves the other rather than himself,
 with a pleasure and delight so rewarding,
 that to the same end they both strive;
 if thousands upon thousands are not worth a hundredth
 part of such a loving bond of such a faith;
 then shall anger alone break and dissolve it?

 Noble spirit, in whom is reflected,
 and in whose beautiful limbs, honest and dear, one can see
 all that nature and heaven can achieve within us,
 excelling any other work of beauty;
 graceful spirit, within whom one hopes and believes
 dwell - as they outwardly appear in your face -
 love, pity, mercy, things so rare
 and never found in beauty so truly;
 love takes me captive, and beauty binds me;
 pity and mercy with sweet glances
 fill my heart with strong hope.
 What law or power in the world,
 what cruelty of this time or of a time to come,
 could keep Death from sparing such a lovely face?