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,
...

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

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,
...

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
...

Bitter tears pour down my face
with an anguished storm of sighing,
when my eyes chance to turn on you
...

There are creatures in the world with such other
vision that it is protected from the full sun:
...

I have offered you my heart a thousand times
O my sweet warrior, only to make peace
with your lovely eyes: but it does not please you
...

The time to labour, for every animal
that inhabits earth, is when it is still day,
except for those to whom the sun is hateful:
...

Alone and thoughtful, through the most desolate fields,
I go measuring out slow, hesitant paces,
...

Blessed be the day, and the month, and the year,
and the season, and the time, and the hour, and the moment,
and the beautiful country, and the place where I was joined
...

Heavenly Father, after the lost days,
after the nights spent wandering,
with that fierce desire that burned in my heart,
...

She let her gold hair scatter in the breeze
that twined it in a thousand sweet knots,
and wavering light, beyond measure, would burn
...

A new young angel carried by her wings
descended from the sky to the green bank,
there where I passed, alone, to my destiny,
...

The heavens have revolved for seventeen years
since I first burned, and I am never quenched:
...