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Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra - 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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Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra

  • I find no peace, yet am not armed for war;
  • I hope and yet I fear; I freeze, I burn;
  • On earth I lie, above the heavens I soar;
  • I would embrace the world, yet all things spurn;
  • And she doth hold me in a cell confined
  • Who neither makes me hers nor sets me free;
  • Love will not kill, nor yet my cords unbind,
  • Nor wills I live, nor ends my misery.
  • I have no tongue, yet speak, no eyes, yet see;
  • I long to perish, yet I call for aid;
  • I loathe myself, yet love with constancy,
  • Weeping I laugh and on affliction feed;
  • And life and death I hold in equal hate.
  • Through you, my lady, comes this evil state.
  • cxxxiv

1340-1. See Mascetta, p. 479.

During the years that elapsed after the time when Petrarch and Laura met, her youthful beauty must have diminished, especially when her health was broken. It was perhaps on some such occasion when Petrarch had noted this that he composed the following exquisite sonnet recalling her appearance when he first met her and the love then awakened which could not now be quenched at a later time on account of the changes he perceived.