Questo no, rispos'io, perchè la rota Or che si sia, diss' ella, io n'ebbi onore "O no!" I cried, "the rolling spheres above That kindled first the nascent spark to love, Whatever clime your heavenly presence own'd, Had led me there by sacred instinct bound." "Whate'er you think, the honour all was mine,” The vision answer'd with a smile divine; "But heedless how the blissful moments fly, You see not how Aurora climbs the sky!" BOYD's Transl. Her lover then asked her, if it would be long before he should rejoin her. Laura departed, saying: "As far as it is permitted me to know, thou wilt remain long upon earth without me" Ella già mossa, disse: Al creder mio, Tu starai in terra senza me gran tempo. Petrarch survived Laura twenty-six years. E AN ESSAY ON THE POETRY OF PETRARCH. NON HO SE NON QUEST' UNA VIA DA CELARE IL MIO ANGOSCIOSO PIANTO. I. THE vision of the spirit of Laura was written, as appears by the expressions at the close of it, when Petrarch was far advanced in years. He revised it four months before his death, and inserted it as an episode in a moral poem which he called the TRIONFI-a series of allegorical visions on the powers of Love, Chastity, Death, Talents, Fame, Time, and Eternity. Several Provençal poems written before his time, and the Dream, the Flower and the Leaf, and the House of Fame, of his contemporary Chaucer, are of the same description*. * POPE's remark on the House of Fame. |