Poem of the Day (Mar 30)

Subject: RE: Poem of the Day (Mar 30)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:42 PM

It is Italian, 14th century, a sonnet -- part of the Canzoniere, Petrarch's collection of exquisite poems, hundreds of them.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Poem of the Day (Mar 30)
From: Peg
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:21 PM

beautiful translation Peter! Did you translate it from the original? (not sure I know what language that might have been--I'm guessing Greek?)

peg

Subject: Poem of the Day (Mar 30)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 Mar 01 - 02:05 PM

Just for the heck of it. One of Petrarch's most beautiful late poems, lamenting his lost Laura:

All of my flowering youth was gone,
And I had begun to feel the beginnings
of the cooling of the heart, and the onset
of fear that never again would love

Come to me. But just then, my dear enemy,
Finally beginning to overcome her fears,
At last playfully turned towards joy,
And me. Oh, the time was infinitely close when Desire
And Love would come together, and lovers
At last could sit together and laugh, confiding.

Death, envying this bliss -- or rather envying
The almost fulfillment of our long hope -- rushed
between us, like an attacking army.

(free trans. Peter T.)