What is sonnet 4 of Amorum Libri Primus about?

Question

I left my book an hour-and-a-half away.

Answer 1

Oy, oy, "youdamnedkid", that's inspired (though Wittgenstein would have frowned)! Those Scandinavian cobblers are all alike, aren't they? Better stay away from them.

Less inspiredly, and back to the original question:
What book is it? Is it Matteo Maria Boiardo? If so, below is the 4th sonnet in the Libro primo of the Amorum libri, but maybe it isn't the text as much as an interpretation that you want. Anyway, here goes:

Ordito avea Natura il degno effetto
ch'or se dimostra a nostra etade rea,
ne l'amoroso tempo in che volea
donar a li ochi umani alto diletto.

Ragiunti insieme al più felice aspetto
se ritrovarno Jove e Citerea
quando se aperse la celeste Idea
e diette al mondo il suo gentil concetto.

Sieco dal ciel discese Cortesia,
che da le umane gente era fugita,
Purità sieco e sieco Ligiadria.

Con lei ritorna quella antica vita
che con lo effetto il nome de oro avia,
e con lei inseme al ciel tornar ce invita.

Answer 2

It's a narrative poem, written in Latin in iambic duodecillameter.

Through the use of three coinciding allegories and and an unrelated metaphor, it tells the tale of a young Scandinavian cobbler wandering the streets of Paris. He's a remarkable dancer, but only in the shoes he's created himself using his mother's blunt needles and father's broken monocle.

He must, to impress the government office in which he seeks employment, confound a wealthy landowner's elderly mother and seduce her. By wearing a bear pelt and covering himself in trout jelly, he fools her poor eyesight and she believes him to be the angel of death.

She grasps his hands in struggle, but by some unnatural instinct, the pelted, jellied-up Scandinavian begins to waltz with her. She swoons with exhaustion and passion, and he collects her undergarments, places them prominently on his head as though a hat, and dashes through the streets whooping.

It's been called one of history's most powerful visions of love, and one of literature's most lucid portrayals of the destiny of the everyman.