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Poi che voi et io più volte abbiam provato - 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.


Poi che voi et io più volte abbiam provato

  • Since you and I full many a proof can bring
  • That vain and false have been each hope and joy,
  • Lift up your heart unto a better thing,
  • That highest good that never brings annoy.
  • This earthly life is like a meadow green
  • Where the snake lies in flowers and grass entwined,
  • And where the eyes delight in what is seen,
  • The vision charms and captivates the mind.
  • If therefore you would have your soul unstirred
  • By the world’s tumult ere the final day,
  • Follow the few and not the common herd.
  • I hear your answer, ‘Brother, thou the way
  • Showest to others where full often thou
  • Thyself wert lost and never more than now.’
  • xcix

Petrarch’s mystical temperament also appears in the following: