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Oimè il bel viso, oimè il soave sguardo - 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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Oimè il bel viso, oimè il soave sguardo

  • Ah, that sweet face! Alas! that sóft regard!
  • That noble bearing, winsome, blithe, and free,
  • That speech to soothe a nature fierce and hard,
  • And make the weak grow strong! Unhappy me!
  • Ah! that sweet laughter whence the dart has flown
  • Whose wound must end in death, my happiest fate!
  • Ah! regal soul most worthy of a throne,
  • Hadst thou not fall’n upon the world too late!
  • In you I needs must dwell and breathe and glow,
  • Since I was always yours; if you depart,
  • No other sorrow can I feel or know.
  • With hope and fond desire you filled my heart,
  • When I did say farewell, yet longed to stay!
  • And now the wind has borne the words away!
  • cclxvii

1348. Cochin, p. 124.

The bitterness of his soul also finds expression in the following: