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Il dì che costei nacque, eran le stelle - 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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Il dì che costei nacque, eran le stelle

    • The day that she was born, those stars did shine
    • In high and chosen places
    • That most do shed on earth their favouring graces.
    • Each to the other did with love incline;
    • Venus and Jove with countenance benign
    • Did hold the lordliest state, serene and high;
    • While every orb malign
    • Was chased in shame from out the smiling sky.
    • The sun had never opened day so fair;
    • Jocund the blooming earth, the sky and air,
    • Peace on the waters of the seas and streams!
    • Yet while with friendly light the vision teems,
    • One distant cloud doth grieve me, dark with care,
    • The which may melt, I fear, in tears of woe,
    • Unless the heavenly powers some pity show.
    • When to this nether world her spirit flew
    • (Which for such gentle soul was all unmeet)
    • ’Twas a strange thing and new
    • To see a child so saintly and so sweet.
    • She seemed a white pearl in a golden nest!
    • Now creeping, now with trembling steps and slow,
    • Her baby feet did go,
    • Till the wood and rock and greensward that they pressed
    • Grew soft and fresh and warm,
    • And the field bloomed beneath her innocent eyes,
    • And balmy grew the skies,
    • And calm the wind and storm,
    • While she with lips just weaned went prattling on!
    • Thus to a world as blind and deaf as stone
    • The light and glory of the heavens were shown.
    • When she in years and virtue grew apace,
    • And reached the age of adolescence green,
    • I do believe such glory and such grace
    • The sun had never seen!
    • Her eyes with modesty and joy were filled,
    • Her speech with health and happiness did glow,
    • Till every other tongue would soon be stilled
    • If it should seek to tell what thou dost know!
    • Her countenance did shine with heavenly light,
    • And with its dazzling beauty blind your sight,
    • And from her earthly tenement a fire
    • Did come to fill thy heart with such desire
    • That none did ever burn with flame so bright!
    • But when her sudden parting I did see,
    • Methought it must bring bitter days to thee.
    • cccxxv

Petrarch’s grief is expressed with great tenderness and grace in a sonnet to a nightingale mourning its mate, and in another to a little feathered wanderer in the dark days of winter.