When his eyes' serene light shines upon me Se più stanno ad parir quei duo bei lumi
When his eyes' serene light shines upon me,
and they calm a darkened and confused life,
secure me from all the daily outrages,
my only fear is he'll die before me.

When rivers run without water, and when
no one in this world dreads death, when God's
laws are abrogated, and smoke and wind
make light yield wholly to chaotic night,

only then could I survive an hour,
without his glance: my map; through his eyes
I perceive how to learn the way to peace.

Starlight. You long for my suffering. Who
keeps my good from me steals it. Will it be
a day'll come that I see him again -- or die?

 Se più stanno a parir quei duo bei lumi
che pon rasserenar mia vita oscura
e d'ogni oltraggio uman farla sicura
temo ch'anzi 'l suo dì non si consumi.

E pria senz'acqua correran i fiumi
né avrà più 'l mondo di morte paura,
e la legge del Ciel, che eterna dura,
si romperà, qual nebbia al vento o fumi,

ch'io possa senza lor viver un 'ora,
che pur son la mia scorta, e per lor soli
la via di gir al Ciel scorgo ed imparo.

O stella! O fato, del mio mal sì avaro
che 'l mio ben m'allontai, anzi m'involi,
fai mai quel dì ch'io lo riveggia o mora?

Sources:

Ruscelli-VG 10:6; Rizzardi 16:16; Chiapetti 15:18; 1995 Bullock 23:81-82. For Key see A Note on the Italian texts

Comments:

Costa says it is found with Ite, pensier fallaci e vana spene ("Leave me, foolish ideas and useless hopes") and "Quando fia mai quel di felice tanto" ("Will that glad day ever come when I can say") in a MS in Seminary in Padua; all three manifest desperation. However, the last line of this poem plays upon the first of Quando fia mai quel di felice tanto, a poem probably written in the early period of Gambara's relationship with her husband. So despite the long tradition of reading this poem as written to mourn the death of Gambara's husband (e.g., Courten 123-24), I place among the poems written early in Gambara's marriage. I see in the last line a reference to the male lover's return. The conceit about the lover's eyes marks it as about Gambra's husband. See 1995 Bullock p. 81n for variants, commentary and paraphrase; Bullock suggests this is a poem which records Gambara's response to her husband's absence on the battlefield.

This is another poem upon which Mario Marcazzan comments interestingly if somewhat deprecatingly in "Veronica Gambara et i sonetti degli 'occhi luccenti,'" Romanticismo Critico e Coscienza Storica (Firenze: Casa Editrice Marzocco, 1948), p. 116: "Gli accenti appassionati de qualche versi (Ch'io possa senza lor vivere un'ora . . .) si struggono romanticamente nell'idea del consumarsi et del morire."

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