Francesco Petrarch

I go weeping for my time past,
that I spent in loving something mortal,
without lifting myself in flight, for I had wings
...

Diana was never more pleasing to her lover,
when, by a stroke of fate, he saw her naked,
shown in the deep pool of icy water,
than I was by the mountain shepherdess,
...

I have not seen you, lady,
leave off your veil in sun or shadow,
since you knew that great desire in myself
...

Being one day at my window all alone,
So manie strange things happened me to see,
As much as it grieveth me to thinke thereon.
At my right hand a hynde appear'd to mee,
...

I find no peace, and yet I make no war:
and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice:
and fly above the sky, and fall to earth,
...

O my own Italy! though words are vain
The mortal wounds to close,
Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,
...

Many times now, with my true thought,
I've dared to assail my enemy, quiet and humble
in her actions, her beauty seeming kind,
...

If no love is, O God, what fele I so?
And if love is, what thing and which is he?
If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?
If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me,
...

What infinite providence and art
He showed in his wonderful mastery,
who created this and the other hemisphere,
...

When I utter sighs, in calling out to you,
with the name that Love wrote on my heart,
the sound of its first sweet accents begin
...

My passion's folly is so led astray
by following what turns and flees,
...

Greed and sleep and slothful beds
have banished every virtue from the world,
so that, overcome by habit,
...

At the foot of the hill where beauty's garment
first clothed that lady with earthly members,
who has often sent wakefulness to him,
...

When the heavenly body that tells the hours
has returned to the constellation of Taurus,
power from the burning horns descends
...

Glorious pillar in whom rests
our hope and the great Latin name,
...

If my life of bitter torment and of tears
could be derided more, and made more troubled,
that I might see, by virtue of your later years,
...

When from hour to hour among the other ladies
Love appears in her beautiful face,
by as much as their beauty is less than hers
...

My weary eyes, there, while I turn you
towards the lovely face of her who slays you,
I pray you guard yourself
...

I turn back at every step I take
with weary body that has borne great pain,
and take comfort then from your aspect
...

Grizzled and white the old man leaves
the sweet place, where he has provided for his life,
and leaves the little family, filled with dismay
...