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La bella donna che cotanto amavi - 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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La bella donna che cotanto amavi

  • The lady fair whom thou didst greatly love,
  • Did pass, when least we thought, beyond our gaze,
  • And well I hope hath risen to heaven above,
  • So gentle and so gracious were her ways.
  • It is now time to take back both the keys1
  • (Which in her life she held) of thy sad heart,
  • Then by the straight road, follow her with ease,
  • No earthly burden left thy soul to thwart.
  • For, when delivered of thy heaviest load,
  • From what remains thou canst be quickly free,
  • And like a pilgrim to thy new abode
  • Rise all unburdened. Thou canst clearly see
  • How all things move to death. Well may we pray
  • The soul go light upon its perilous way.
  • xci

1337. Cochin, pp. 73-4.

It is possibly to this same brother, when about to enter the monastic life, that Petrarch addressed the following:

[1 ]Of joy and sorrow.