Canzoniere: Selected Poems

by Francesco Petrarca, Anthony Mortimer (Translator, Introduction)

The "Canzoniere", a sequence of sonnets and other verse forms, were written over a period of about 40 years. They describe Petrarch's intense love for Laura, whom he first met in Avignon in 1327, and her effect on him after she died in 1348. The collection is an examination of the poet's growing spiritual crisis, and also explores important contemporary issues such as the role of the papacy and religion.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Italian Literature, Medieval, Italy, Renaissance, Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2002

About the author

Famous Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, collected love lyrics in Canzoniere .

People often call Petrarch the earliest Renaissance "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, which the Accademia della Crusca later endorsed. People credit Petrarch with developing the sonnet. They admired and imitated his sonnets, a model for lyrical poems throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.

Reviews

[Mel Bossa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is much more than a long love poem to Laura, but the musings of a great mind on destiny, the choices we make, and just how honest we decide to be with ourselves.

According to what history says about Petrarch, he was a man divided by a quest to live a simple life of beauty and contemplation, and a relentless need to participate in Italian politics (which in his time were bloody and unbelievably unpredictable as any Game of Thrones episode). He had hopes of returning the papacy to Rome where he believed it belonged.

In the first part of the Canzoniere, I wasn't emotionally invested in the poem, as beautiful as it is--something in it left me a little cold and maybe even annoyed. The adoration of Laura's golden tresses and ephemeral beauty was a little much for me. Of course those who know me well, know I'm sensitive but hate sentimentality, so reading a pre-renaissance poem by an Italian poet was going to be a challenge for this self-proclaimed naturaliste. Anyway, as I read on and reached part two of the epic thing, Petrarch's focus shifted from Laura (I think she had died as he wrote the second part's verses), to his own thoughts and the examination of them. From then on, I was pulled in.

The imagery is very provoking. Petrarch's regrets at not being a better man as he ages, touched me and his real mourning of a life cut short, resounded with my own pain at losing someone I loved more than anything far too soon.

In a way, I think that above all, at least in my own humble opinion, The Canzoniere is a poem to be read later in life when one has suffered a little and after the passage of time has eroded one's youthful hopes. There is a quiet suffering in the last few pages that allowed me to visit my own grief as one would visit a friend in the night--a friend you keep very close to you for fear he will betray you if you should forget him.

"I keep lamenting over days gone by,
the time I spent loving a mortal thing,
with no attempt to soar, although my wing
might give no mean example in the sky.

You that my soul unworthy sins descry,
unseen and everlasting, heavenly King,
succour my soul, infirm and wandering,
and what is lacking let your grace supply;

so, if I lived in tempest and in war,
I die in port and peace; however vain
the stay, at least the parting may be fair.

Now in the little life that still remains
and at my dying may your hand be near:
in others, you well know, my hope is gone."

[Christopher Manieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Petrarch is one of my favourite writers. A very influential poet, he was a master of expressing the sorrow of unrequited love. Devoted to Laura, he often employs classical myth, while also conveying his deep spirituality. He skillfully depicts his emotional suffering, while exalting Laura’s beauty. He also shows an impressive level of introspection. One of his great achievements, the Canzoniere continues to inspire.

In his Secretum, it is evident that Petrarch had difficulty reconciling his ambitious quest for poetic glory with his devotion to God. As the father of Renaissance humanism, with its emphasis on human achievement, it is worth noting that Petrarch still maintained his belief in God, as evident in his other works, such as The Triumphs, which concludes with the poet finding solace in Eternity.

Many of Petrarch’s poems are available in English translation at https://www.poetryimmortal.com/petrarca/

[Ivana · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun to reread Petrarca in English. Being confident that there are plenty of good reviews about this famous poetry book, I don't have anything a lot to say besides simply that I enjoy Petrarca's poetry immensely. When I've first read him as adolescent( when I had to because of the school) I used to think that he was crazy for writing a collection of poems to a women he did not know. Many years later and having learn a bit more about the context of his writing and I'm able to admire him for other things beside his obvious poetical genius. So, thank you Petrarca- one of the best poets that the Renaissance knew...

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

The edition I have includes two letters at the start, "Letter to Posterity" and "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux." They were my favorite parts, because I'm not a poetry person. The poetry was good too (I think): lots of boars in the wood and shining hair and painful devotion; I can dig it. There are rumours that the "Laura" to whom all his poems are devoted is actually a stand-in for fame itself. His painful, painful, romantic, erotic devotion to fame. I can dig that even more (I mean, I've never known true love).

Anyway, I gave this book so many stars because I really enjoyed the letters. A professor told me Petrarch was insanely self-centered, just 100% self-absorbed. I don't think so. I think his letters definitely *do* show someone obsessed with who he is, with his place in the world, with his thoughts and motivations — but that doesn't necessarily translate to narcissism (which is what I think this professor was getting at). We all want to know who we are, and we get lost trying to do so, as we sift through thousands of thoughts and side-thoughts and this and that. Petrarch, in these letters, tries to pierce through these tremendous doubts and come to some sort of center of self. I don't think he accomplishes it (who can?), but he writes two elegant, beautiful letters in the process. Sometimes you find a writer who really reminds you of yourself — just as a regular old person — and you just have to give them all your affection and stars.

[Fabiola Fulco Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro fue una especie de karma para mí, se me hizo interminable. Sin embargo, la poesía de Petrarca lo valió. Laura no solo vive a través de sus versos sino que él acabó viviendo gracias a ella. Ilusión sin equivalencia histórica, constructo simbólico o cualquiera que haya sido el fin de Laura... sin duda está latente en todo el Cancionero, así como la genialidad del poeta que lo compuso.

[Blanca · Rating 3 out of 5]

El de la muerte de Laura :( , me ha servido para clase y los poemas me han gustado mucho

[Marcos Augusto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Petrarch first gained recognition as a poet in Tuscan Italian, thereby helping, along with his Florentine predecessor Dante, to make that dialect the literary language of Italy. His early love poems to Laura were collected in Canzoniere (Songbook), which are regarded as the first examples of the sonnet. He was influenced both by the French chivalric romance and Dante's poems to Beatrice, but Petrarch's poetry is about a real woman, albeit one with whom he never became as intimate as he wished, rather than the idealized lady of French feudalism or Dante's personification of divine truth. His poems differ also because they are as much about his own reflections on his frustrated love for Laura as about the lady herself. When she died during the Black Death in 1348, Petrarch wrote another set of poems about her, collected in Trionfi. They are more similar to Dante's poems to Beatrice in that Laura becomes an allegorical figure of love and truth.

[Beluosus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vorrei che conoscessi migliore l'italiano. Perlomeno potevo un po del Canzoniere leggere -- adagio. Allora, Petrarca non è il mio preferito poeta, ma certamente sono motivato a provare la sua poesia latina.

[Matteo Zenatti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Praticamente sempre in uso.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult to read and appreciate...

[Ari46 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The beauty of Italian poetry is something special

[jessica isnt cool · Rating 3 out of 5]

italian 14th century poet time
although he is not my Favourite, petrarch is definitely skilled with concept and overarching themes amongst poems. i enjoyed the idea of unrequited love as cold, despite passions burning a lot. i also appreciated the longer poems dispersed in the sonnets. i have a slight feeling this translator probably didn’t do a lot of the poems justice and considering the translators note i suspect that my understanding of petrarch would have been a lot richer had i read the Entire canzoniere instead of the selected poems (but i didn’t know when i got it!!!)
still, i enjoyed,
12, 16, 21, 22, 49, 52, 122, 126 in particular, 129, 164, 190 for nostalgias sake (whoso list HER hunt?), 192 because god i love nun imagery at the moment, 224, 264, 273, 279, 293, 311, 364, 365.
i like a lot that its 365 poems and also makes reference to holy days a lot. i like when poets are more thoughtful than they Have to be. they were long ago.
and what is a (14th cent. italian) poet if not longing for two ideals, woman and god?

[Josh Mandel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best poetry I’ve read, and you get to see the fruits of religion happen in real time as Petrarch endures loss and continuously addresses G-d more and more with time in search of comfort, something his art seems to have failed to provide.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man who writes u a sonnet loves you, a man who writes you 366 sonnets must be stuck in a time loop because otherwise this is psychotic

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Francesco Petrarch’s Canzoniere is one of those books that arrives not so much as a collection of poems but as a tidal wave of longing, confession, and invention that permanently alters the coastlines of European literature. Reading Anthony Mortimer’s selection and translation is to hear, in English, the crystalline echo of what shaped centuries of poetry: the lyrical obsession with the self, the beloved, and the interplay of time and memory.

It is impossible to talk about Petrarch without acknowledging his role as the fountainhead of Renaissance humanism, but it is equally impossible to read Canzoniere without being swept up by the intimacy of his voice, which still speaks across seven centuries with a clarity that feels modern, even unnervingly contemporary. This is not simply the poetry of a mediaeval cleric enamoured of a woman named Laura; it is the invention of the interior monologue, of the conflicted lyric subject who questions his own desires and despairs in ways that foreshadow our modern condition.

Take, for instance, Sonnet 61, “Blessed be the day, the month, the year, the season, the time, the hour, the instant,” in which Petrarch catalogues the moment of his first sight of Laura. At first, it reads like a straightforward celebration of love, the obsessive desire to sacralise a single moment. But underneath, there is something else at work—a recognition that memory itself is both ecstatic and enslaving. What he blesses here is not Laura herself, nor even love, but the chain of time that forever binds him to an instant that can never be repeated. Modern readers will recognise the psychology here: we too live in a world of memories that we both venerate and resent, snapshots that dictate our emotional life long after their original moment has passed. In this, Petrarch invents not only the sonnet sequence but also the very idea of autobiography written through fractured time, where the past remains hauntingly alive in the present.

Another famous poem, Sonnet 90, “She used to let her golden hair fly free”, was famously echoed by Shakespeare in his own sonnets. Here Petrarch describes Laura as though she were half angel, half woman, her hair scattering light, her face both human and divine. And yet, in the later years, after Laura’s death, this image turns elegiac. What was once the icon of earthly beauty becomes a memory distorted by grief.

Mortimer’s translation catches that shimmer, the movement between sensual immediacy and ghostly distance. What emerges is not merely courtly love poetry but something like the first great meditation on absence. The poem moves from idealisation to loss, and in that turn, you can already see the seeds of modern lyric poetry, which is less about praising an external object than about mapping the cracks of the inner life.

Petrarch’s obsession with Laura has sometimes been dismissed as pathological, a kind of literary idolatry. But if you read closely, you realise that Laura is both a real woman and a literary device, a muse and a mirror. She embodies not only desire but also Petrarch’s awareness of the futility of desire. In Sonnet 134, “I find no peace, and all my war is done,” he writes of being caught between opposites: “I fear and hope; I burn and I am ice.”

This oxymoronic structure became a staple of Renaissance poetry, but more importantly, it describes the divided modern self—the subject who is never unified, never at rest, always torn between impulses that contradict. We could read this as the beginning of a psychological literature, where the lyric voice is not the expression of harmony but of fracture. In a way, Petrarch anticipates Freud: the human psyche as a battlefield where opposing forces endlessly clash.

When we compare Petrarch to modern poets, the parallels are striking. T.S. Eliot, for instance, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, also obsesses over the failure of desire, over time as both devourer and preserver. Prufrock’s “Do I dare?” echoes Petrarch’s constant oscillation between bold proclamation and self-censure.

Or consider Sylvia Plath, whose confessional intensity is worlds away in subject matter yet similar in method: she, too, transforms the raw stuff of longing and despair into crystalline lyric moments that fracture the self into sharp, memorable lines.

Even poets like Rilke—especially in The Duino Elegies—echo Petrarch’s sense of love as both transcendence and destruction, the beloved as both gateway to the divine and reminder of mortality. What makes Petrarch modern is not that he loved, but that he loved with self-awareness, with a consciousness of how love dislocates and unmakes the subject.

Petrarch’s role in literary history cannot be overstated. He invented the sonnet sequence as a form of personal diary, a series of poems that together create the narrative of a life. Before him, love poetry existed as an externalised praise of women, often stylised and abstract.

With him, love poetry became the chronicle of inner struggle. Every poet after him, from Shakespeare to Wyatt to Sidney, is indebted to this move. But even beyond form, what Petrarch bequeaths to us is a method of self-scrutiny. He is the first poet to make his contradictions the very matter of poetry. That is why when we read him today, we do not find merely a relic of courtly love but a contemporary voice, still asking the same questions we ask: What is it to love? What is it to lose? How do we endure time’s erosion of all things? How do we make meaning out of the war inside us?

Perhaps one of the most haunting aspects of Canzoniere is how Laura herself remains a kind of absence. She is described and adorned but rarely given an independent life. Some critics accuse Petrarch of objectifying her, and perhaps rightly so. But another reading is possible: Laura is less a woman than the name Petrarch gives to the divine trace in the human world, the spark of beauty that both elevates and destroys. In this sense, she functions as the hinge between sacred and secular, between human passion and spiritual yearning.

The poems oscillate between erotic desire and religious guilt, between the flesh and the soul. Modern poets, too, live in this tension, though perhaps stripped of Petrarch’s explicit theology. To read him is to see the roots of our own ambivalence about desire—its holiness and its corruption, its power to make and unmake the self.

Mortimer’s translation and introduction capture this duality. The English loses some of the music of Petrarch’s Italian, but it preserves the precision of his thought.

More importantly, Mortimer’s selection allows us to see the arc of the sequence: from the first intoxication of love to the devastation of loss, from youthful passion to mature reflection. What emerges is a portrait not of Laura but of Petrarch himself, a man caught in his own contradictions, writing them out as though to find release.

In the end, Canzoniere is not about Laura at all. It is about the invention of a new way of speaking, a lyric voice that is both confessional and universal. That is why Petrarch still matters. He gives us the template for modern poetry: the subject divided, the beloved absent, time as both blessing and curse, and memory as prison and redemption.

To read him alongside our modern poets is to realise that the essential questions have not changed. We still long, we still suffer, and we still turn to poetry to map the battlefields of our hearts. Petrarch’s sonnets are not museum pieces but living documents of desire, mirrors in which our own fractured selves can still recognise their reflection.

[Cee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The entire Canzoniere are 365 poems written by the early humanist Francesco Petrarca, centering around his love for Laura. My version only had sixty of the poems, because a lot of them are hard to translate into English without losing a lot of the form and syntax that makes them special.

I'm not a big poetry reader. The amount of books with poems that I've read can easily be counted on one hand. I think the Canzoniere were a bit too ambitious for me; at times I had no clue what Petrarca was talking about at all. I could still enjoy his imagery though, and for a guy that lived over 600 years ago his themes still feel very familiar. His love for Laura is static, but heartfelt. He's a big fan of "cold flames" and "hot ice", but I guess we have to cut him some slack about that. When this was written, these kind of oxymorons were still fresh in literature, and probably didn't feel as contrived as they do to us now.

I have of course no way of judging whether this translation by Anthony Mortimer is close to the original or not, but I enjoyed what he did with it. He managed to keep plenty of sentences rhyming without making everything rhyme, which would make the poems end up like children's poems. There were plenty of beautiful sonnets that I liked.

The Canzoniere was completely outside of my comfort zone, but I enjoyed the experience.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works by Francesco Petrarca – a look at this and a few hundred other works is available on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...

10 out of 10

There are a few poems, sonnets of Francesco Petrarca that have had an immense impact on the under signed – knowing them by heart and reciting them periodically – for months, it was a daily ritual, I wish that will become part of the routine again – helped improve the mood, bring joy and serenity, happiness in the end

These masterpieces https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/10/... bring readers to a Higher State of Consciousness, Glasperlenspiel – the Talmud says ‘be careful with your thoughts, for they become words’ - and such words make one think of heaven, and they can even bring one there
The Talmud continues – ‘watch your words, for they become acts, be careful with your acts, because they become habits, habits form character and character is you’, I also think of the psychology experiments with words, that showed what a tremendous impact they have, even on our age, we could argue…

For this test, they had people come to this place and then there were two groups, one was exposed to words associated with old age – Florida, grey, slowly and the like – while the other group was spared this exposure, and at the end of the test, those ‘attacked with old words’ went on to take twice as long to get to the exit

- My point is Petrarca would make one fly

Let me write a little about one of my favorite poems, ‘m-a tintuit în dor si chin Iubirea ani douzeci si unu’ – I memorized it in my own tongue, and a translation would just harm it, but it is about being in love for twenty-one years, missing the loved one and crying, moaning for her – the latter sounds quite bad actually,
This is because my love has died, her eyes have closed, only again, this is not doing justice to the magnum opus, it is destroying it, however, in the form I have been keeping in my mind for so long, thinking of it even when…swimming, it was delight; why when swimming, well because I get bored just moving hands and feet for half an hour

Then it goes on with

- ‘I am tired and curse the weakness that eliminated the good wishes’

This is evidently far from the beatitude provoked by the verses, surely in the original, and if not that, then in a good, elevated, translation

The next steps are sublime:

- ‘The few days left, I dedicate to God

Which is ever more relevant now, for if when younger, I saw this as beautiful, but there was no way I would embrace faith, now, there are second thoughts

- I venerate God and praise his greatness

In other words, there is so much in such few lines, the lost love, pain suffered because of the loss of Laura
Nevertheless, there is redemption, possibly, and the remorse, the redemption envisaged, because he can see his mistake

Instead of moaning https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... the surviving lover should have thought of God
It goes back to rituals, habits form character and we are that, character strengths would include transcendence:

- Appreciation of excellence and beauty, gratitude, humor, hope, spirituality

These are the elements of transcendence, which contribute with other traits to our character, as identified by Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is the co-founder of
- Positive Psychology

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

[Shawn Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended title for teachers who want to demonstrate REAL Italian/Petrarchan sonnets from the first master of the style. I love that Anthony Mortimer actually kept the Petrarcan rhyme scheme in his translation. So many choose words without the rhyme which is such a vital part of a sonnet! I had permission to use #13 "When sometimes Love comes in that lovely face/Quando fra l'altre donne ad ora a ora for Grace Awakening, but instead ended up doing my own translation of 61 (which Mortimer doesn't do). This demonstrated to me the serious challenge of capturing words, iambic pentameter and correct rhyme scheme. Not easy.

[Ema · Rating 5 out of 5]

I immediately fell in love with this book.

More than a love story, it is sort of a confession of a man who, living at the end of the Middle Ages, thinks about how to reconcile the new, post-humanist ideals with traditional Christian ideology, how to solve the contradiction between earthly and heavenly love, between the irresistible desire for happiness in this life and the irrational fear of death and eternal damnation. Even more than that, Canzoniere made a considerable impact on the poetry that came after it and inspired a whole generation of Petrarca's followers - Petrarchists, some of whose works I have had the immense pleasure to read and study about.

[Ainsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Francesco Petrarca was the foremost scholar of his day. This set of love poems was dedicated to his love Laura and was written over a span of some twenty years, from the moment he first met her at age twenty three to the point where he learned of her death some twenty years later. She never returned his love. The Canzoniere is luminous with poetry, and a delight to read. This edition has a parallel Italian text.

[Lisa Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful accident it was to discover Petrarch. I am definitely going to make sure my future students all know about him and his love for a woman who never knew he existed. 50 years of dedicated love from one look in a church is here in this book, and you will definitely find a new favorite poem.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slim volume is a collection of poems that Petrarch spent over forty years composing. I've dog-eared practically every page, which is the strongest recommendation I could offer for any book.

"I see a storm in port, and, tired out,
my pilot there, the mast and rigging down,
and the bright stars I contemplated spent."

[Marlies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had a Petrarca! WOW...I love the sonnets about Laura. I love his work. He's the absolute master of sonnets. Moves you to tears..really.

[Let · Rating 5 out of 5]

Petrarca al giorno d'oggi... senza dubbio arrestato per stalking!

[Gino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read It and studied it in Italian Fac de Lyon, long time ago

[Nemanja · Rating 3 out of 5]

18, 30, 61, 126, 134, 218, 250, 267, 365

[Ada · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry, this is like the medieval equivalent of bad wattpad romance: predictable, one track minded, trope-y. Dante is so much better. Go read that.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I do, seeing my master's fright,
except stay with him in the final hour?
To die for love: there is no lovelier death.

I often find, when I've read a book of poetry which is filled with wonderful writing, that I curse the fates that left me with a memory like a sieve. I want to be able to remember this stuff and drop it into conversation like a Lord Peter Wimsey. I can remember them with effort and repetition.

All that is a preamble to say that I enjoyed this collection, which was written (as best we know) between 1327 and 1368, although a final version came out just before Petrarch's death in 1374. They were written in vernacular Italian not Latin, which was unusual for the time and for Petrarch himself. Petrarch, alongside Boccaccio (who was a friend of Petrarch), and Dante helped make writing in Italian (which isn't the proper term for it at this point but it'll do for simplicity's sake) acceptable. The three writer's major works were published between 1320 and 1374, which pretty much makes them contemporaries.

This is a selection of the Canzoniere not the full collection. They're translated, introduced and have notes by Antony Mortimer. The notes are relatively light but useful. The introduction is well-worth reading. This collection has the original Italian for you to compare and contrast should you be fluent. I was able to pull some sentences together based on my very rusty Latin and French, but not more than one or two in each poem.

Petrarch apparently claimed he'd never read Dante's Divine Comedy, which may or may not be true. But you do wonder whether he read Vita Nuova. For Dante's Beatrice we have Petrarch's Laura. The collection features a lot of poems about Laura. She is the love of Petrarch's life. But she was married - according to Petrarch - and then she - like Beatrice - died young.

These poems are as much about grief as love. They're not poems of pleading to a lover but lamentations of what might have been and what is to come. There is much sighing and pity. As this selection comes to an end there's also an element of regret that he wasted so much time in grief.

Now I am weary, and my life I spurn
for so much error that has almost slain
the seed of virtue, and what years remain,
high God, to you devoutly I return,

contrite and sad for every misspent year,
for time I should have put to better use
in seeking peace and shunning passions here.

Lord, having pent me in this prison close,
from everlasting torment draw me clear:
I know my fault and offer no excuse." (364)

The later poems in this selection are the most beautiful in my totally amateur opinion. The grief feels real and painful as our poet sits in the countryside and suffers for lost love.

You can also tell how influential they were. Even modern poets have probably been influenced by Petrarch, even if by osmosis rather than directly. Chaucer wrote a tribute to him and Shakespeare knew his work. And he reaches backward to Ovid. I have a theory that I occasionally like to deliver when I'm drunk that literature is all one book linked together by either direct influence or echoes through other writers.

Anyway that was a long way to say I liked it. I will re-read it. And try and learn some of them. What more can you ask from a poetry collection.

[Pardis TD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alone and pensive, through the most desolate fields
I go, measuring my steps with slow and steady pace,
And my eyes, in awe, I guard carefully,
To avoid the places where human footsteps echo.

No other defense I find, but this is my refuge,
To shield myself from the storms of people's gaze,
Because in my outward state, they see the inward fires
That I am burning with, though I cover them outwardly.

So I no longer have where to escape,
Except in thoughts that close themselves in my heart,
And I paint a sorrowful shape on my face,
So that my inner pain may appear clearly.

Yet, I find no place so wild or desolate,
That love does not accompany me there,
And I have my thoughts always with me, which are passionate.

[Joyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

once again i bounce off petrarch in english, as at uni. this time i will blame the translation as it was mostly clunky and self defeating. he aimed not to let himself be totally bound by rhyme so instead it's just a mess, occasional rhymes clunking out of blank verse, making you wonder why he twisted those lines around to fit it when he flees it elsewhere