Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79. | | | | Vaucluse | | He Esteems Everything Happy That Surrounds Laura’s Habitation | | Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) |
| | Petrarch’s Sonnets on Vaucluse. III.
Translated by Susan Wallaston
BRIGHT happy flowers! and herb so bounteous fed, | |
| O’er which my Laura’s modelled foot hath stept: | |
| Ye meads! that have her words’ sweet music kept, | |
| Nor yet restored the impress of her tread: | |
| Unfettered shrubs! ye leaves so freshly shed! | 5 |
| Pale violets! where Love hath fondly crept; | |
| Ye woods! whose shade doth Phœbus intercept, | |
| And in his stolen beams so proudly spread! | |
| Sweet landscape! stream! that doth so purely roam, | |
| From laving oft her beauteous face and eyes, | 10 |
| Thou wanderest clear in their reflected light: | |
| I envy ye, so near her modest home! | |
| No rock among ye habit’s law defies, | |
| But owns alike the flame my soul doth blight. | | | | |
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