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Vago augelletto che cantando vai - Francesco Petrarch, Some Love Songs [1915]

Edition used:

Some Love Songs of Petrarch, translated and annotated with a Biographical Introduction by William Dudley Foulke (Oxford University Press, 1915).

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Vago augelletto che cantando vai

  • Thou little wandering bird of plaintive lay
  • Mourning thy brighter time of past delight,
  • Who seest behind thee summer and the day,
  • And close beside thee winter and the night;
  • If thou couldst understand my evil state,
  • As thine own keen affliction thou dost know,
  • Thou’dst come unto this breast disconsolate,
  • And we would each divide the other’s woe.
  • I know not if our sorrows equal be,
  • Perchance the mate thou mournest liveth still,
  • While death and heaven so churlish were to me;
  • Yet these dark days, this season sad and chill
  • With memories of my sweet and bitter years,
  • Move me to talk with thee and share thy tears.
  • cccliii

In another sonnet he sends his verses to her tomb.