- A Petrarchan Sonnet - in Italian and an English translation
-
- Gli occhi di ch'io parlai sí caldamente,
- et le braccia et le mani e i piedi e 'l viso,
- che m'avean sí da me stesso diviso,
- et fatto singular da l'altra gente;
- le crespe chiome d'òr puro lucente
- 'l lampeggiar de l'angelico riso,
- che solean fare in terra un paradiso,
- poca polvere son, che nulla sente.
- Et io pur vivo, onde mi doglio e sdegno,
- rimaso senza 'l lume ch'amai tanto,
- in gran fortuna e 'n disarmato legno.
- Or sia qui fine al mio amoroso canto:
- secca è la vena de l'usato ingegno,
- et la cetera mia rivolta in pianto.
(Translation:
- The eyes I spoke of with such warmth,
- The arms and hands and feet and face
- Which took me away from myself
- And marked me out from other people;
- The waving hair of pure shining gold,
- And the flash of her angelic smile,
- Which used to make a paradise on earth,
- Are a little dust, that feels nothing.
- And yet I live, for which I grieve and despise myself,
- Left without the light I loved so much,
- In a great storm on an unprotected raft.
- Here let there be an end to my loving song:
- The vein of my accustomed invention has run dry,
- And my lyre is turned to tears.
Sonnet 18 Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
