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Io son sì stanco sotto il fascio antico - 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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Io son sì stanco sotto il fascio antico

  • I am so weary of the heavy load
  • Of all my sins and all my wicked ways
  • That I do fear to faint upon the road
  • And in my enemy’s hands to end my days.
  • Lo! a true friend to rescue me draws nigh;
  • Unspeakable His courtesy and grace;
  • Then far beyond my sight He soars on high
  • So that in vain I strive to see His face.
  • But still His voice re-echoes with the strain,
  • ‘Ye who are heavy laden come to Me;
  • I am the way that others bar in vain.’
  • What grace, what mercy, what divine decree
  • Will clothe me with the pinions of the dove
  • To rise from earth and find my rest above?
  • lxxxi

1338 (?). Mascetta, p. 337.

The tumult in his soul is thus described in the metaphor of a storm at sea: