Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Già fiammeggiava l'amorosa stella - Some Love Songs

Return to Title Page for Some Love Songs

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Literature

Già fiammeggiava l’amorosa stella - 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).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Già fiammeggiava l’amorosa stella

  • The star of Love1 already was ablaze
  • Throughout the East in the clear morning air,
  • And in the North, spreading its glittering rays,
  • The star that stirred the wrath of Juno fair.2
  • The agèd housewife rises, stirs the fire
  • Barefoot, ungirt, and sits her down to spin;
  • Fond lovers soon must quench their hearts’ desire
  • And all unwilling, mark the day begin.
  • Now she who had been close to death appears
  • (How changed she is!)—not by the customed way,
  • Which sleep has closed and grief has filled with tears,
  • But by the path of dreams—and seems to say,
  • ‘Take heart once more, why should thy courage flee?
  • Not yet these eyes of mine are lost to thee.’
  • xxxiii

1333. See Mascetta, 121.

Laura’s eyes were the subject of three famous canzoni called ‘The Sisters’, greatly admired by all Italian critics, though not easy to translate effectually into another language. The following is the second of these canzoni.

[1 ]Venus.

[2 ]Callisto, a nymph beloved by Jupiter and transformed into a star in the Great Bear.