Francesco Petrarch Poems

Full of a wandering thought that separates me
from all other men, and makes me go lonely through the world,
hour after hour I am tempted from myself
...

DOTH any maiden seek the glorious fame
Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy?
Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy
...

I'd sing of Love in such a novel fashion
that from her cruel side I would draw by force
a thousand sighs a day, kindling again
...

Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find,
Forcing from her hard heart full many a sigh,
And re-enkindle in her frozen mind
...

You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
...

To make a graceful act of revenge,
and punish a thousand wrongs in a single day,
Love secretly took up his bow again,
...

It was on that day when the sun's ray
was darkened in pity for its Maker,
that I was captured, and did not defend myself,
...

As at times in hot sunny weather
a guileless butterfly accustomed to the light,
flies in its wanderings into someone's face,
...

Not Ticino, Po, Varo, Arno, Adige or Tiber
Euphrates, Tigris, Nile, Erno, Indus, or Ganges,
...

No weary helmsman ever fled for harbour
from the dark and tempestuous ocean waves,
as I do from gloomy and turbid thought,
...