these thoughts of his youth, and others were destroyed before his death. However, the few which remain suffice to call up his passions.[1]
The oldest poem seems to have been written in Florence about 1504:[2]
"How happy I lived, Cupid, so long as I was allowed to resist your passion victoriously! Now, alas! my breast is wet with tears—I have felt your strength. ...."[3]
Two madrigals, written between 1504 and 1511, and probably addressed to the same woman, are poignantly expressive:
"Who is it leads me by force to you . . . Alas! Alas! Alas! . . . closely enchained? And yet I am free! . . ."
"Chi è quel che per fonza a te mi mena,
Oilme, oilme, oilme,
Legato e strecto, e son libero e sciolto?"[4]
"How is it possible that I am no longer myself?
- ↑ The first complete edition of the poems of Michael Angelo was published by his great-nephew at the beginning of the seventeenth century under the title: “Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti raccolte da M. A. suo nipote," 1623, Florence. But it is full of errors. Cesare Guasti, in 1863, issued in Florence the first edition that was at all exact. But the only truly scientific and complete edition is the admirable one of Carl Frey: "Die Dictungen des Michelagniolo Buonarroti, herausgegeben und mit kritischem Apparate versehen von Dr. Carl Frey," 1897, Berlin. It is the one to which I refer in the course of this biography.
- ↑ On the same sheet are drawings of horses and men fighting.
- ↑ "Poems," ii. (See Appendix, iii.)
- ↑ Ibid., v.
