Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Amor, se vuo' ch' i' torni al giogo antico - Some Love Songs

Return to Title Page for Some Love Songs

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Literature

Amor, se vuo’ ch’ i’ torni al giogo 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).

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.


Amor, se vuo’ ch’ i’ torni al giogo antico

  • If thou wouldst bend me to thy yoke anew,
  • O God of Love, as all thy pains do show,
  • Ere thou my spirit shalt again subdue,
  • A new strange test thyself must undergo.
  • Find me the treasure that lies hid away
  • In the dark grave and left me stripped and poor.
  • Find that wise heart and pure
  • Wherein the fount of all my being lay.
  • Then, if thy power be such as men do say
  • In heaven above and in the abyss below,
  • (What things among us here thy skill can do,
  • So oft are proved and true
  • I think that every gentle soul doth know)
  • Take back from Death the prize his arm doth bear,
  • And set thine emblems on that visage fair.
  • Grant that again her gracious look I see,
  • Which like a sun did melt the ice away,
  • And let me on that path discover thee
  • Where went my heart and evermore did stay.
  • Take thou thy golden arrows and thy bow,
  • And let me hear again the cord rebound,
  • And the words of tuneful sound
  • That taught me all the depths of love to know!
  • Move thou the lips in which the charm did lie
  • That bound me; hide thy snare
  • Within her clustering hair!
  • To lure me elsewhere vainly wilt thou try.
  • But fling again those tresses to the wind,
  • And all content, my spirit thou canst bind.
  • For naught could free me from the threads of gold
  • That in her rippling ringlets did appear,
  • Nor from the fragrant breath that did enfold
  • Her gracious presence, tender yet austere.
  • Both day and night they kept my love more green
  • Than the fresh laurel hid in sylvan glades
  • When summer foliage fades;
  • Or myrtle, when the winter blast is keen;
  • But now that cruel death so stern hath been
  • And broke the bond from which I could not fly,
  • In all the world no other wilt thou find
  • My heart again to bind.
  • What use, O Love, to try?
  • Thine arms are lost; my spirit now is free,
  • I fear thee not; what canst thou do to me?
  • cclxx

Date shown by manuscript, commenced June 9, 1350, finished 1351. Cochin, pp. 125-6.

But in his dreams of Laura the thoughts of his own fame as a poet are not wholly absent. His earlier songs had been written to give his heart relief; now he would more willingly write to please the world, but with her death his inspiration had passed and her memory calls him away.