| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXVI. Melancholy
Gli occhi di ch’io parlai | | By Petrarch (Francisco Petrarca) (1304–1374) |
| | Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
THOSE eyes, ’neath which my passionate rapture rose, | |
| The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile | |
| Could my own soul from its own self beguile, | |
| And in a separate world of dreams enclose, | |
| The hair’s bright tresses, full of golden glows, | 5 |
| And the soft lightning of the angelic smile | |
| That changed this earth to some celestial isle, | |
| Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows. | |
| And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn, | |
| Left dark without the light I loved in vain, | 10 |
| Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn; | |
| Dead is the source of all my amorous strain, | |
| Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn, | |
| And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain. | | | | |
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