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The Complete Canzoniere: Contents

The Complete Canzoniere
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table of contents
  1. Title Page
  2. Section I - Poems 1 to 61
  3. Section II - Poems 62 to 122
  4. Section III - Poems 123 to 183
  5. Section IV - Poems 184 to 244
  6. Section V - Poems 245 to 305
  7. Section VI - Poems 306 to 366

Contents

Petrarch's Virgil

You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,

To make a graceful act of revenge,

It was on that day when the sun’s ray

What infinite providence and art

When I utter sighs, in calling out to you,

My passion’s folly is so led astray

Greed and sleep and slothful beds

At the foot of the hill where beauty’s garment

When the heavenly body that tells the hours

Glorious pillar in whom rests

I have not seen you, lady,

If my life of bitter torment and of tears

When from hour to hour among the other ladies

My weary eyes, there, while I turn you

I turn back at every step I take

Grizzled and white the old man leaves

Bitter tears pour down my face

When I have turned my eyes to that place

There are creatures in the world with such other

Ashamed sometimes that your beauty,

I have offered you my heart a thousand times

The time to labour, for every animal

I’ll sing of the sweet time of my first youth,

If the honoured branch that wards off

Love wept, and sometimes I wept with him,

No ship, beaten and conquered by the waves,

Charlemagne’s scion, whose head is adorned

O blessed and lovely spirit expected in Heaven

Green dresses, crimson, black or purple,

I saw a girl under green laurel

That gentle spirit that departs,

The closer I come to that last day

Already Venus, the star of love, was blazing

Apollo, if that sweet desire is still alive

Alone and thoughtful, through the most desolate fields,

If I believed I could free myself, by dying,

The thread on which my heavy life hangs

Orso, there never was lake or river

I’m the afraid of those lovely eyes’ assault

If Love or Death do not bring some flaw

When that tree that Apollo once loved

But now that her clear sweet humble smile

Apollo, Latona’s son, had sent his gaze

Caesar who was all too ready, in Thessaly,

Mirror, my enemy, in which you are allowed

The gold and pearls and flowers, crimson and white,

I felt those spirits weakening in my heart

Since fire is never quenched with fire,

Though I’ve protected you from lying,

At the moment when the swift sky turns

If the light had neared my eyes a little

Diana was not more pleasing to her lover,

Gentle spirit, that rules those members

Because she bore Love’s emblems in her aspect,

That fire that I thought had been quenched

If, through blind desire that destroys the heart,

My luck is always late and slow to reach me,

My dear lord, rest that cheek of yours

Though another’s fault takes me away

The gentle tree that I’ve loved many years,

Blessed be the day, and the month, and the year,

Index of First Lines in Italian

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