NAVIGATION: Index of Dr. Weller's Class Material Index of Petrarchan Love Poetry

Petrarch, Il Canzoniere, #1.  Translated by A. S. Kline.


Lecture Topics:
  • The "scattered" nature of the whole collection
  • The personal address to the audience, in which he asks for understanding and fears mockery
    — compare to Cathy's Clown
  • The Petrarchan sonnet form

  1     You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
  2     of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
  3     in my first vagrant youthfulness,
  4     when I was partly other than I am,
  5     I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
  6     for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
  7     between vain hope and vain sadness,
  8     in those who understand love through its trials.
  9     Yet I see clearly now I have become
 10     an old tale amongst all these people, so that
 11     it often makes me ashamed of myself;
 12     and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
 13     and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
 14     of how the world's delight is a brief dream.

 

  Petrarch, Il Canzoniere, #1.
Translated by Susan Wollaston

 1    Oh ye! who list the echo of my sighs,     A
 2    Whose voice my heart's fond ailment became,     B
 3    When wand'ring youth pursued its doubtful aim,     B
 4    And but in part I held my present guise;     A
           
 5    My song, which doth each varied style comprise,     A
 6    As hope, or vain despair awakes its flame,     B
 7    May win your pity, if not pardon claim     B
 8    From all, who too have mourned love's fatal prize.     A
           
 9    But well I know, if to the passing throng     C
10    A problem long I dwelt, within my breast     D
11    Too oft the pang of shame would darkly gleam:     E
           
12    And this, the fruit of my fond, doting wrong,     C
13    Repentant grief — while I this truth confest,     D
14    That each fair earthly joy is but a dream!     E